The main reading of those classes is my own book: The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization.
I also mention the series of long-form articles that I wrote for Peachpit Press
1. Emotional Data Visualization: Periscopic's "U.S. Gun Deaths" and the Challenge of Uncertainty
2. Heroes of Visualization: John Snow, H.W. Acland, and the Mythmaking Problem
3. A Confederacy of Truth-Tellers: The Bright (But Challenging) Future of Small or Independent Visualization Teams
4. The Many-Faced Infographic: Brooklyn, Elephants, and the Visualization of Data
AS AN INTRODUCTION, first watch this video lecture: Infographics, the art of visualizing information
PRESENTATIONS/VIDEOS/PODCASTS
My talks at Chicas Poderosas and at Tapestry.
What makes a good data visualization? With Manuel Lima, Kaiser Fung, Jonathan Stray, and others
Kevin Quealy
Noah Iliinsky (who is author of a nice intro to visualization)
Me again, one and two
Amanda Cox
Simon Rogers
Hans Rosling
Kim Rees
Bas Broekhuizen
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Besides my own The Functional Art, see List 1 and list 2
Free book: Data + Design, a simple introduction to preparing and visualizing information.
Visualization Design and Analysis: Abstractions, Principles, and Methods, by Tamara Munzner (draft for upcoming book).
The Form of Facts and Figures: Design Patterns for Interactive Information Visualization, MA dissertation by Christian Behrens.
Also, see this impressive series of books by Rune Petterson, downloadable for free.
Rafe Donahue's Fundamental Statistical Concepts in Presenting Data is great, as well.
POSTS/ARTICLES
Infographics and visualizations as tools for the mind
Alberto Cairo
Learning to See
Oliver Reichenstein
Visual encoding
Michael Dubakov
The Trifecta Checkup framework for visualization criticism
Kaiser Fung
An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data
Jon Schwabish
Visual literacy in the age of data
Shazna Nessa
Data Visualization Checklist
Stephanie Evergreen
Storytelling with data
Jonathan Corum
Essential Collection of Visualization Resources
Andy Kirk
On the differences between information-data-scientific visualization(s)
Sheila Pontis
Data visualization for human perception
Stephen Few
The 8 hats of data visualization design
Andy Kirk
How to become a data visualization expert: A recipe
Enrico Bertini
How to choose your graphic: Graphic Cheat Sheet
Billion Dollar Graphics
A good example of how to criticize and redesign a flawed chart
Robert Kosara/EagerEyes
How to choose the right chart
Carla Uriona
A survey of powerful visualization techniques, from the obvious to the obscure
Jeff Heer, Mike Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky
A taxonomy of visualization types
Duke University
Design principles for visualization
Lena Groeger / Propublica
The Narrative Eros of the Infographic
Reif LarsenA taxonomy of visualization types
Duke University
Design principles for visualization
Lena Groeger / Propublica
The Narrative Eros of the Infographic
Bringing infographics and visualization to the mainstream
Alberto Cairo
Ending the infographic plague
Megan McArdle
Disinformation Visualization: How to lie with datavis
Mushon Zer-Aviv
A Quick Illustrated History of Visualization
DataArt
Interaction design for data visualizations
Lars Grammel
The Science of Information Visualization
Robert Kosara
How Much Data Do You Really Need?
Robert Kosara
The Explanatory Power of Data Points
Robert Kosara
The Three Types of Chart Junk
Robert Kosara
Using data visualization to find insights in data
Gregor Aisch
About Nigel Holmes
Robert Kosara
A Big Article About Wee Things
Lena Groeger
Visualizing Social Facts: Otto Neurath's ISOTYPE project
Frank Hartmann
When maps shouldn't be maps
Matt Ericson
William Playfair and the Psychology of Graphs
Ian Spence
Droughts on deadline
Kevin Quealy
Using indexed charts to represent change
Chandoo. See also this other article
The future of data visualization
Drew Skau
10 things you can learn from The New York Times' data visualizations
Andy Kirk
Fast thinking and slow thinking visualization
Spatial Analysis
Tower Graphics
Lulu Pinney
The process of creating data visualizations
Jan Willem Tulp
Data art vs. data visualization: Why does a distinction matter?
Stephen Few
Data visualization: Clarity of Aesthetics (part 1, part 2, part 3)
Ben Jones
Stacked area chart vs. Line chart – The great debate
Andy Kriebel
How to display headlines and intros in graphics
Storytelling with data
The case for horizontal bar graphs
Storytelling with data
ON DATA JOURNALISM:
Computational Journalism reading list
Jonathan Stray
Open data journalism
Simon Rogers
IT professionals in the newsroom
George Wright
Speaking of Graphics: An Essay on Graphicacy in Science, Technology and Business
Paul J. Lewi
SOME BLOGS TO FOLLOW
In no particular order. I've just copied them from my RSS reader in the way they are (un)organized in there. Copy and paste in your browser:
http://www.thefunctionalart.com (of course!)
http://visualisingdata.com/
http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/
http://eagereyes.org
http://flowingdata.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog
http://vizwiz.blogspot.com/
http://infosthetics.com/
http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/
http://blog.visual.ly/
http://www.xocas.com/blog/en/
http://michaelbabwahsingh.com/
http://feltron.tumblr.com/
http://thedailyviz.com/
http://thewhyaxis.info/
http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/
http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/
http://blogs.forbes.com/naomirobbins/
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
http://fellinlovewithdata.com/
http://well-formed-data.net/
http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/
http://lulupinney.co.uk
http://dataremixed.com/
http://storiesthroughdata.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/
http://www.interactive-infographics.com/