Visualization

By

Dr. Norman L. Soong

The Goal of Visualization Or Information Visualization?

• Communicating, explaining, influencing, informing, or proofing to the viewer’s mind’s eyes.Or,

• Deceiving, lying, or misleading.

The Stages of Information Processing

• Acquisition and storage,• Processing and analysis,• Knowledge extraction,• Visualization and presentation• Decisions and policy making.

Visual Proof

Visual Proof Pythagoras Theorem (497BC)

• In any right triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square on the sides containing the right angle.

• There are 367 different ways to prove this theorem.

• Chou Pei Suan Ching (6 C.B.C to 2C.A.D) from China.

Visual Proof Pythagoras Theorem

Visual Proof Pythagoras Theorem

Visual Proof Pythagoras Theorem

Visual Proof Chou Pei Suan Ching

Visual Proof Chou Pei Suan Ching

Visual Misleading

Visual Misleading How can this be true?

Visual Deduction

Visual Deduction Amphidromic Point

• Tide is caused by the sun, moon, and rotation.

• The volume of sea water is fixed.

• Is there a place in the world where there is no tide?

Visual Deduction William Whewell’s Work

• In 1800’s, William Whewell measured cotidal lines at North Sea.

• Cotidal lines: Lines connecting points experiencing the high tide at the same time

• Amphidromic Point: The nodal point around which the kelvin wave rotates. Tidal range at the amphidromic point is 0 and increases with distance away from it.

Visual Deduction Plot of Cotidal Lines

Visual Deduction At its best

Amphidromic Point

Visual Communication

Visual Communication War of 1812

• By Charles J. Minard in 1861,• The best statistical chart ever drawn.• Napoleon had 422,000 men going

into Russia, 10,000 returned.• Chart plots 6 variables: size,

location, and direction of the army, geography, temperature, and dates.

Visual Communication War of 1812 – At its best

Visual Hide and Seek

Visual Hide and Seek Where are the cherries?

Visual Hide and Seek Now you see it, but ‘why’

To separate useful information from useless ones.

Visual Detective

Visual Detective Work London Chorela Epidemic

• August 19 to September 19, 1854,a total of 616 death.

• Dr. John Snow suspected water impurity.

• The following plot shown the true culprit, a water pump at Broad Street.

Tufte, Visual Explanation

Visual Detective The Chorela Zone

Visual Detective The Location of the Wells

Visual Detective The boundary of infected area

Visual Detective Visual deduction at its best

Visual Detective Zoning leads to wrong conclusion

Visual Detective Disastrous conclusion

Visual Tragedy

Visual Tragedy Space Shuttle Challenger

BlackSmoke

NASA

Visual Tragedy Morton Thiokol’s Presentation

Visual Tragedy Ordered by Temperature

CausingSevere

Damage

Low Temp High Temp

Visual Tragedy On a Temperature Scale

No DamageSerious Damage

Visual Tragedy On a Temperature Scale

Challenger

No DamageSerious Damage

Visual Tragedy Space Shuttle Challenger

January 28, 1986 NASA

VisualExplanation

Visual Explanation Galaxy through Hubble Telescope

Visual Explanation Adaptive Optics

Visual Explanation Before and After

Visual Explanation At its Best

N.Y. Times

A Poor Case of Visual

Explanation

Wind Tunnel Effects Poorly Communicated

VisualExploration

Visual Exploration Sun Spots and Galileo

In 1610-1612, Galileo and others made detailed telescopic observations of sun spots.

Placing a sheet of paper at some distance from the telescope, one can observe the projection of the sun together with its dark spots.

Their positions and sizes may be marked by a pen.

What are these spots?

Tufte, Visual Explanation

Visual Exploration An Original Plot by Galileo

Visual Exploration A Recorded Time Sequence

Visual Exploration Condense a Sequence into a Plot

Visual Exploration Conclusions Drawn by Galileo

The spots moves across the sun in a narrow band in a uniform way.

The spots are flat, disk shaped, surface spots. (How did he do it?)

They vary in darkness and density. They combine and they split up. The sun is spinning in a 30 day cycle.

Visual Exploration Maunder’s 24 year plot in 1904

latitud

e

year

Visual Exploration Conclusions from Marnder’s Plot

Known as the butterfly plots. The plots have a 12 year cycle. Few spots above 30°, none above 40°. The density of sun spots varies in a

cyclic pattern.

Visual Exploration 100 Years of Maunder’s Diagram

Duplex plots

Year1877-1980

Equator

Latitude

Percentage ofSun covered

SunspotsHigh Sunspot

Activities

Visual Exploration at Its Best 100 Years of Maunder’s Diagram

Duplex plots

Year1877-1980

Equator

Latitude

Percentage ofSun covered

Sunspots

Visual Exaggeration

Visual Exaggeration Sunspot Activity Chart

More exciting

Less exciting

Visual Exaggeration Sunspot Activity Chart

Lost in the excitement:Sunspots activities have a sharp

Rise and slow falloff characteristics.

Visual Exaggeration Venus Flyby

Venus: Magellan Flyby, NASA, 1992

Visual Exaggeration Venus Flyby

After removing 22.5 times exaggeration in vertical direction

The Psychology Of seeing

The Psychology of seeing Minimum Effective Threshold

From HarvardDinning Hall

The Psychology of seeing Can be an un-willing culprit.

The Psychology of seeing Creating a Non-existing Shape

The Psychology of seeing Now you see it

The Psychology of seeing Now you have a hard time.

But Why?

The Psychology of seeing

The Psychology of seeing Two happy faces

The Psychology of seeing

Now you have only one

But why?

QualitativeVisualization

Qualitative Visualization Not all fixes are the same.

Qualitative Visualization Dante’s Inferno

Qualitative Visualization Six degree of separation

Qualitative Visualization What statement is it making?

Target Department Store

Qualitative Visualization Identify the industry

Qualitative Visualization What does it say to you?

Qualitative Visualization What does it say to you?

The Goal of Visualization

• Communicating, explaining, influencing, informing, or proofing with viewer’s mind’s eyes.Or,

• Deceiving, lying, or misleading.

Seeing with Mind’s Eyes.

Bye

Welcome

For the Class

Of CSC2500

Summary of article‘Information Visualization’ from Readings of Information Visualization,Edited by S.K.Card, J.D. Mackinlay, B. Shneiderman, Morgan-Kaufmann, 1999.

pages Focus Contents

1-9 External cognition Visual examples Visualization applications

10-16 Cognitive amplification

Psychology Why visualization works

17-23 Visualization processing

Computing in database

From raw date to viewing

23-30 Visual structure Physiology Efficient visual features

31-34 View transformation

Conclusion What should we do

Question & AnswerFrom CSC2500 - Survey of Information Sciences

• Where is the growth in this field ?(Is this an area of growth, of career opportunities?)

Life skill, similar to reading and writing.Great growth – but hard to measure directly.There is no such job title yet.

• What is coming in the future?What is the bleeding edge looking like?

It is already here.1st, we have computer to do speedy visualization.2nd, we have Internet to provide instant worldwide

access.3rd, we need to do it to help us to communicate.

Question & Answer

• Brief history of the area:Communication and expressing oneself is as old as mankind.Architectural floor plan ~2000BC, in clay tablet.Statistical chart started by Playfair in 1786.Visual depth queuing at the time of Renaissance.

From 1980 to today, the advances made in the field of computer graphics have made its applications effective – the wheel is still rolling.

In the 1980’s, computers introduced business graphics to aid the decision making process in the financial world - flopped.

E.F. Tufte wrote his three books on information presentation – the jury is still out.

Question & Answer

• How are employees adapting to the increasing use of technology in this area?

Currently, 2D spatial still images.Near future, dynamic information – video.Near future, integrating sound.Future, 3D virtual reality.Finally, addressing all 7 senses.

--- Do you sensing the visual technique that I am using right here?--- As comparing to the next slide.

Question & Answer

• How are employees adapting to the increasing use of technology in this area?

Currently, 2D spatial still images.Near future, dynamic information – video.Near future, integrating sound.Future, 3D virtual reality.Finally, addressing all 7 senses.

--- Do you sensing the visual opportunity that is missed right here?--- An extra dimension in communication is missed out.--- That fading out represents less likely to happen.

Question & Answer

• How did you get involved in this?Personally, I am an artist disguised as a scientist.Career path takes strange detours.

• Give a specific example of the impact of technology in this area.  In other words, what does the technology-enhanced approach do that previous approaches could not do.

Nothing.The difference is not in its capabilities but in its cost

effectiveness.What can a word processor like MS/Word do in the strict sense

of word processing that a type writer can not? – Nothing.

Question & Answer

• Pay scales for workers in this area.I do not know there is such a job description yet.How much is good writing skill worth?

• What ethical issues are involved?Communicating, explaining, influencing, informing, proofing,Or, Deceiving, lying, or misleading.Tools do not lie, people do.

Question & AnswerInformation Visualization

• What is Information Visualization and its relationship to computers?--- Computers do the work; designers do the critical visualization process, and the viewers are informed.--- Similarly, what is word processing and its relationship to computers? The writers must do the critical thinking.--- There is no magic software that can replace the intelligence of the designers, the writers, etc.

• What is Knowledge Crystallization?--- This is a cognitive process that is unique to human beings. It is the ability to read information, hence gain knowledge on some subject, from a collection of raw data.

Question & AnswerInformation Visualization

• What is the definition of a data table? --- In the context of the paper, it relates to database, a specially important discipline in computing sciences.--- Without database, there will be no stored information, there will be little need to have computers.--- In its most basic form, all information are two dimensional, hence they can be presented and stored in the form of tables. John is 6’ tall makes sense, but 6’ tall by itself does not.--- Most databases store raw data in two dimensional tables. An entry in a table is called a relation.--- Before relevant information can be presented to the viewers to digest, they must be extracted from the general database. This process is crucial – extracting the wrong information could lead to false knowledge.

Question & AnswerInformation Visualization

• How is this important to what Tuft is trying to explain in his article.--- The way this article is written may give the impression that the table is an important dimension to Tufte’s analysis on the Challenger disaster. This is rather unfortunate.--- Data tables by themselves have no bearing on the Challenger disaster. People cause disasters.--- The Tiokol engineers presented the launch data in the form of a table, although it is in a graphical form, it is not interpreted properly – hence, nearly useless.--- Tufte’s argument is not on the form of data tables, but on the presentation of information – clearly depicted in this slide show.

Question & AnswerInformation Visualization

• Is this technology a part of some video game program.--- Definitely YES. Visual cognition is all around us.

• How does one intend to make the information understandable to a wide-target audience?--- I can write a book on this subject. Communicating to a wide range of audience is a form of art.

Question & AnswerInformation Visualization

• What is a Tractenberg system?--- Good question, it is time to go onto the Internet to find out.

• Does the field of information visualization have techniques for presenting data to the visually impaired or blind?--- It is a fast developing area in this field. There are printers that can print in relieve format. See example.