I spent some time looking into the history of Vega this week. Vega appears to be very interesting; unlike other visualization tools and libraries I have used such as Tableau, which runs on direct human-visualization interaction, and d3.js, which runs through programming, Vega operates off of just one JSON file. Once a JSON file packed with information about a visualization is parsed via Vega, it is transformed into a interactive visualization.

Anyway, this week, Dr. Battle asked me to gradually transition away from dependency upgrading tasks and start working on Vega optimization with other graduate students on the team. Because Vega optimization is a new subject that the graduate students are also unfamiliar with, we decided to have a group meeting to brainstorm and list out proposals on Vega optimization.