Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 11 Scientific and Information Visualization Some examples.
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Transcript of Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 11 Scientific and Information Visualization Some examples.
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 11
Scientific and Information Visualization
Some examples
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 22
What is Information Visualization?
Visualize: to form a mental image or vision of …
Visualize: to imagine or remember as if actually seeing.
American Heritage dictionary, Concise Oxford dictionary
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 33
What is Information Visualization?
“Transformation of the symbolic into the geometric” (McCormick et al., 1987)
“... finding the artificial memory that best supports our natural means of perception.'' (Bertin, 1983)
The depiction of information using spatial or graphical representations, to facilitate comparison, pattern
recognition, change detection, and other cognitive skills by
making use of the visual system (Hearst 03).
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 44
Visual Aids for Thinking
• Build tools to amplify cognition.• Example: multiplication (Card, Moran, & Shneiderman.)
• In your head, multiply 35 x 95– Now do it on paper– People are 5 times faster with the visual aid
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 55
The Power ofInformation Visualization
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 66
Visualization Is Not New
• Cave paintings• Hieroglyphics• Maps
– Streets– Terrain
• Napoleon’s little excursion to Russia
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 77
The power of visualization; getting directions
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 88
Directions layered on map
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 99
Directions layered on map layered on satellite image
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1010
Visualization for Problem Solving
From Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, 1997
Illustration of John Snow’sdeduction that a cholera epidemicwas caused by a bad water pump, circa 1854.
Horizontal lines indicate location of deaths.
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1111
Visualization for Problem Solving
From Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, 1997
Zoom of previous slide.
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1212
Visualization for ElicitingKnowledge from Data• Problem of multivariate data
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1313
Scatter plot
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1414
Rose Poster
(also on course web page)
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1515
The Target
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1616
Here’s Boston
Visualization for Clarification
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1717
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1818
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 1919
Graphs
Touchgraph.com
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2020
Inbound traffic measured in billions of bytes on the NSFNET T1 backbone for September 1991
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2121Byte traffic into the ANS/NSFnet T3 backbone for the month of November, 1993
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2222
Two Different Primary Goals:Two Different Types of Viz
Explore/Calculate Analyze
Reason about Information Communicate Explain Make Decisions Reason about Information
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2323
Goals of Information Visualization
In more detail, visualization should:– Make large datasets coherent
(Present huge amounts of information compactly)
– Present information from various viewpoints – Present information at several levels of detail
(from overviews to fine structure)
– Support visual comparisons – Tell stories about the data
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2424
Human Perceptual FacilitiesUse the eye for pattern recognition; people are good at scanning recognizing remembering images
Graphical elements facilitate comparisons via length shape orientation texture
Animation shows changes across time Color helps make distinctions Aesthetics make the process appealing – but be careful!
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2525
The Need for Critical Analysis
• Lots of creative ideas, but they often fail in practice
• The hard part: how to apply visualization judiciously– Inventors usually do not accurately predict how their invention will be used– Cool != good– Usability studies
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2626
Problems?
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2727
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2828
Cool? Good??
• Baby Name Wizard• Social Explorer
– NYC race map
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 2929
Case Study:The Journey of the TreeMap
• The TreeMap (Johnson & Shneiderman ‘91)
• Idea: – Show a hierarchy as a 2D layout– Fill up the space with rectangles representing objects– Nested rectangles indicated levels of hierarchy– Size on screen indicates relative size of underlying
objects.
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3030
Case Study:The Journey of the TreeMap
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3131
(Joh
nson
& S
hn
eid
erm
an
‘91)
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3232
Early Treemap Applied to File System
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3333
Treemap Problems
• Too disorderly– What does adjacency mean?– Aspect ratios uncontrolled leads to lots of skinny boxes
that clutter
• Hard to understand– Must mentally convert nesting to hierarchy descent
• Color not used appropriately– In fact, is meaningless here
• Wrong application– Don’t need all this to just see the largest files in the OS
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3434
Successful Application of Treemaps
• Think more about the use– Break into meaningful groups
• Make appearance more usable– Fix these into a useful aspect ratio– Do not use nesting recursively
• Use visual properties properly– Use color to distinguish meaningfully
• Use only two colors: – Can then distinguish one thing from another
• When exact numbers aren’t very important
• Provide excellent interactivity – Access to the real data– Makes it into a useful tool
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3535
Squarified TreemapsBruls, Huizing, van Wijk, 1999
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3636
A Good Use of TreeMaps and Interactivity
www.smartmoney.com/marketmap
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3737
Treemaps in Peets site
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3838
Analysis vs. Communication
• MarketMap’s use of TreeMaps allows for sophisticated analysis
• Peets’ use of TreeMaps is more for presentation and communication
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 3939
Open Issues
• Does visualization help?– The jury is still out– Still supplemental at best for text collections
• A correlation with spatial ability• Learning effects: with practice ability on visual display
begins to equal that of text
• Does visualization sell?– Jury is still out on this one too!
• This is a hot area! More ideas will appear!
Comp 401 – Senior Seminar 4040
For next time:
• Bring an example of a use of visualization that clarifies, explains, or reveals useful information that was not otherwise evident. Try not to do something really standard
• Financial line graphs• Musical notation• Straight-forward or obvious illustration
– Try to find a good example• Wired magazine has many bad examples
– Potential sources:• Web sites, popular science magazines, newspapers