The Table Lens:

1
The Table Lens

• Merging Graphical and Symbolic Representations in
  an Interactive Focuscontext Visualization for
  Tabular Information
• Ramana Rao and Stuart K. Card

Presented by David T. Wang
2
Outline

• Basic Ideas
• More in depth
• Demos
• Summary

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Basic Idea

• Advanced spreadsheet.
• Allows simultaneous viewing and manipulation of
  thousands of data points.
• Numerical data presented as histograms.
• Other data presented as colors or shades.
• Easy facilitation of sorting, grouping,
  filtering.
• Focus Context. (Fisheye).

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Focus Context

• Dynamic Distortion

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Spotlighting

• Highlight certain entries. Re-sort, watch the
  re-distribution.
• Highlight entries that match search criteria.

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Demos

• Baseball demo
• A/V demo

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Favorite Sentence

• The visualization uses a focuscontext (fisheye)
  technique that works on tabular information
  because it allows display of crucial label
  information and multiple distal focal areas.

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Strength

• Simple concept.
• Ease of use low overhead in learning to use.
• Allows manipulations of datasets two orders of
  magnitude larger than a spreadsheet.

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Weakness

• Good, simple idea supported by redundant
  explanations.
• Demo presses home redundant points.
• Did I mention redundancy?

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Information Visualization

• Overview
• Zoom
• Filter
• Details on demand

11
Summary

• Table Lens is now a product at Inxight
  www.inxight.com (trial version download).
• Follow up papers in 1995, Exploratory Data
  Analysis (EDA) term defined.