This is a graduate level course that investigates visual analytics tools and techniques used to synthesize information and derive insight from massive, dynamic, ambiguous, and often conflicting data, and to communicate the findings effectively for decision-making. Extensive use of case studies based on real-world events will be used to illustrate course concepts. Students will be required to present recent conference or journal papers from the visual analytics literature and to apply visual analytics techniques toward a focused research problem in a real-world application or a domain of interest.