Table Lens

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Table Lens

• A new way to view data tables

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Table Lens

• Increase information density
• A magnifying glass without distortion
• Promotes easy scanning
• Combines graphical and textual
• focal data is textual
• nonfocal data is graphical

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Increased Information Density

• Spreadsheets focus on all data, requires one
  character height for all cells.
• Table Lens focuses only on some data, allowing
  most cells one pixel height.
• Users can process general trends of more data.

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A magnifying glass without distortion

• Enlarge focal cells and maintain rectangular
  shape.
• Keeps nonfocal cells from being distorted
• Focus on entire cells, no fragments

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Easy scanning

• Graphical instead of textual
• Easier to process bar graphs than numbers
• Easily recognize trends

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Terms

• Degree of Interest
• Focal, row focal, column focal, nonfocal
• Zoom, adjust, slide
• transfer function

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What its good for

• Proportional data
• order of 10s of dimensions
• order of 100s of variables
• examining data for trends, outliers,
  relationships

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What its not good for

• Entering data, like in Excel
• Nominal values, name of team
• Can be difficult to select a desired cell, e.g.
  the row for player Bill Buckner