Title: Seek and You Shall Find
1- Seek and You Shall Find
- Visualization Tools
- Professor Elaine Ferneley
2What is Visualization?
- Defn (vb) to form a mental image or vision of
.. to imagine or remember as if actually seeing
- Graphic representations of data can be used to
make the information contained more accessible. - The graphical form is easier to investigate than
tables of data. - It helps the user to search for items of interest
and to detect patterns. Examples include graphs
and bar charts. - Cognitive activity it goes on in the mind,
creation of an internal model or cognitive map - Internal to the individual human being provides
insight and understanding - Individuals will interpret visualizations in
different ways
3Visualization Metaphors
- All attempts to create a representational picture
from some information are visualization. - Sometimes the representation will explain a
physical fact e.g. a bar chart for the heights of
all the children in a class. - Sometimes the representation will explain
conceptual facts e.g. business processes - Information visualization is different because
the mapping is not based on the physicality of
the data. - All data has a physical form words in a book,
documents stored on a hard disk but in order to
graphically display the meaning behind the data a
new physicality has to be created. - This new physical model creates a metaphor to
help the user navigate the information that is
presented to them. In Microsoft Windows, a
desktop metaphor supports access to computer
files.
4A Classic Visualization
Individuals all have a unique understanding
perspective
5Minards Map of Napoleons March on Moscow
Originally created in 1812
- Depicts several variables in a small space
- the size of the French army depicted by the width
of the bands - its location on a two-dimensional surface
- the direction of the movement of the advance
(pink upper band) and retreat (black lower band)
- the temperature on certain dates during the
retreat.
6Florence Nightingales Coxcombs to highlight
needless deaths during the Crimea War (1854-56)
- Mortality peaked in January 1855
- - 2761 died of contagious diseases,
- 83 of wounds, 324 of other causes.
- Based on the army's average
- strength of 32393, Nightingale
- computed an annual mortality rate
- of 1174 per 1000.
- Blue deaths from preventable
- disease (cholera typhoid)
- Red deaths from wounds
- Grey deaths from other causes
7Key Visualisation Issues
- Selection
- should all data be represented
- can selection take place automatically
- Is it useful to suppress information.
- Presentation
- How do you lay the data out e.g. Harry Becks
distortion of the tube network to make the best
use of space and make it more memorable - New issues of how to present on mobile devices.
- Representation
- Colours, lines, slopes, graphs, pie charts etc
- Can attributes be combined
- How do you represent many attributes (gt20 ?).
- Scale
- How to cope with vast quantities of data
abstraction. - Rearrangement, interaction and exploration
- Can the user view be changed
- Is it possible to explore the underlying
datasets.
8Rearrangement the key to insight
- Simple example for illustration
- 10 crops e.g. rice, cereal, barley, corn etc.
- 7 treatments e.g. fertiliser, insecticide,
pruning etc. - Result of treatment noted
- Purple improvement
- White degradation.
7 treatments fertiliser, insecticide, pruning
10 crops, rice, barley, corn
9Rearrangement the key to insight
7 treatments fertiliser, insecticide, pruning
A B C D E F G
1 3 8 2 6 10 4 7 9 5
10 crops, rice, barley, corn
10Rearrangement the key to insight
7 treatments fertiliser, insecticide, pruning
A B C D E F G
A D C E G B F
10 crops, rice, barley, corn
Can now clearly see that certain groups of
treatments are appropriate for certain types of
crops
11Left and Right Brain Activity
- The need to produce visualisations of data can be
seen as the need to incorporate left and right
brain activity. - Current search engines are seen as analytical,
methodical, serial technologies suited to the
activities of the left hemisphere of the human
brain. - Shapes and patterns have been ignored by the text
based approach and would tap in to right
hemisphere activity. - Bad displays of data obviously make perception
much more difficult for people. - The layout of the voting cards in some US states
was seen as the main reason why the whole 2000
election was thrown into turmoil because the poor
representation of information actually hampered
peoples decision making capabilities.
12US Voting 2000 Why we have Bush??
13US Voting Why we have Bush??
14US Voting
- Errors associated with the design of the Palm
Beach County ballot were primarily due to poor
ballot layout, resulting in problematic spatial
mappings. - The two-page format of the ballot violated the
expectations of voters. People reading English
text read from left to right and will read a
left-hand page from top to bottom before reading
a right-hand page. - Thus, the natural behaviour for voters was to
start at the top of the left-hand page and read
down. - However, holes on the ballot book corresponded in
alternating fashion to candidates on the left and
right pages. - Some voters claimed to be confused and said that
they wanted to vote for the second candidate from
the top left (Gore) but punched the second hole,
which actually corresponded to Buchanan, who was
listed on the right-hand page
15Is this Possible???
16Focus on the dot in the centre and move your head
backwards and forwards
17Are the purple lines straight or bent??
18Do you see grey areas in between the squares?
Where did they come from?
19You should see a mans face and a word
20This is not animated!
21 Who do you see??
- Relax and concentrate on the 4 small dots in the
middle of the picture for 40 secs - Then, take a look at a wall near you (any smooth,
single coloured surface) - You will see a circle of light developing
- Start blinking your eyes a couple of times and
you will see a figure.
22Rudolph Arnheim the Power of the Center
23When things come out of a centre or, the reverse,
bear in on a centre, a dynamic is created. Our
eye is drawn to or away from the centre
24When things come out of a centre or, the reverse,
bear in on a centre, a dynamic is created. Our
eye is drawn to or away from the centre
25DaVincis The Last Supper
26What do You Feel?
27What do You Feel?
28What do You Feel?
29What do You Feel?
30Visualization and Large Datasets
- It is hoped that the previous experience of the
user will help them with the new, abstract
information. - Investigating the semantics of data means
creating links and classifications regardless of
physical boundaries and it is these semantic
connections that can be given a graphical
representation. - The aim of information visualisation is to
provide a computer-based, interactive graphic of
abstract data which improves cognition - As an alternative to a search on the internet
returning a text list, a graphical representation
can show the links between sets of concepts. - The aims are to allow the user to find what they
need faster and to identify previously
unrecognized relationships.
31Problem of Information Retrieval from
intranets/the internet
- External factors
- Limited time, exponential growth of content
- increase in naïve users, few new tools
- Query factors
- Encourage fast wandering, bibbling, collaboration
- Support for fuzzy query formulation do you know
what you want to know ???
32Mapping Cyberspace using Geographic Metaphors
- IP access across USA
- Different colours represent time routing
- Not accessible
- IP address access from Stamford University
33Statistical Maps of Cyberspace - Size of country
represents internet usage
- A "census" of Internet connectivity by countries
has been developed at Computer Science
Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison,
USA. - The map opposite shows the differential levels of
network connectivity
34The Art of Asking
- Volvo intranet study
- 58 single keyword searches, 34 single phrase
searches, 8 gt one word or phrase - Why are sophisticated questions not asked
- Users do not have mathematical or logic training
Boolean expressions inappropriate - ((nivana OR grunge) AND seattle) AND NOT
hinduism - Semantic gulf only 15 of users use the same
expression to search for a specific topic - Were lazy ! usually only submit one word
- My index is bigger than yours ! approach of
most search engine suppliers
35Internet usage in Europe
- Produced by Eric Guichard, at the Ecole Normale
Superieure, Paris. - Countries are colour-coded according to hosts per
capita and the green circles show domains per
capita. - Blue diamonds show the national population.
36Tile Based Maps
- "ET-Map" - a multi-level category map of the
information space of over 100,000 entertainment
related Web pages listed by Yahoo!. - Developed by by Hsinchun Chen, at the University
of Arizona, USA
37Virtual World Representations
- The 3D cityscape view of the Web generated by
Map.Net. - You fly-through the world, with individual
websites represented by different buildings. - The large skyscrapers are the most popular and
important site on the Web.
38Themescape very advanced but can not be
reconfigured by interrogation
- a visual landscape of hundreds or thousands of
web pages - Peaks - represent concentrations of documents
about a similar topic. - more documents create higher peaks
- valleys between peaks contain fewer documents but
with more unique content - Documents in common mountain ranges or valleys
are related. - Topic Labels - reflect the major two or three
topics represented in a given area of the map, - quick indication of what the documents are about
- additional labels often appear when you zoom into
the map for greater detail.
39Hyperbolic Trees www.webbrain.com
- Ideal for hierarchical data
- Search engine results
- File directories
- Data, information and certainly knowledge is not
hierarchical - Extension of the hyperbolic tree should consider
cross branch associations.
40Example 2 Spectacle from aidministrator.com
- Data represented as a system of text labels
spheres connected by straight lines - Each label represents a class (category) of
pages, e.g. sports - Each sphere is an instance of a class (every page
belonging to that category). - The lines indicate that an instance is a member
of a class or that a class is a subclass of
another one (e.g. football is a member of sports
and sports could be a subclass of entertainment).
41How to Read a Spectacle Graphic
- All elements are located in space through a
system of attraction and repulsion between the
objects (as if you had springs inside the lines) - objects that are semantically close appear
spatially close - objects that are semantically far away appear in
distant locations - In this context "semantically close" means that
two classes share many instances or that two
instances belong to the same class.
42How to Read a Spectacle Graphic Cont.
- Example depicts the contents of recruitment
agency database - Jobs classified economic sector recreation,
finance, education - The size intersections of the classes stands
out immediately due to the clustering of spheres - quite a few of the jobs are classified under
several classes e.g. one of them "hangs" from
finance, management secretarial. - Classes placed on opposite sides of the diagram
don't have any member in common (government
security vs., healthcare sports).
43Support Mechanisms
- Natural language interfaces (AskJeeves
www.ask.com) - show me info on Nivana or other grunge bands
from Seattle but nothing on Hinduism - Query expansion
- Query is automatically augmented with synonym
keywords from a thesaurus - Tends to increase the amount of data brought back
- Domain pruning
- Predefined categories e.g. Yahoo!
- Intelligent agents
- Learn about the user
- Support user collaboration
44Exploration - Understand/identify the reasons
behind a rearrangement
- Must be interactive
- Reconfigurable interfaces
- Multiple views/perspectives
- Must be capable of interrogation
- Embedded query manipulation languages
- Current limitations on recreation of graphical
interfaces quickly - Key questions
- Is the interface intuitive
- Can the interface be reconfigured to give a user
specific view - Can multiple concurrent views be displayed
essential for knowledge sharing - Can the underlying data be queried
- Can alternative views be generated within an
acceptable time period.
45Finally, not All Visualizations have to be
Serious!
46Summary
Visualisation is not a new discipline