DevLan/vispubs huggingface dataset:
Network Visualization by Semantic Substrates
Authors: Ben Shneiderman, Aleks Aris
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Networks have remained a challenge for information visualization designers because of the complex issues of node and link layout coupled with the rich set of tasks that users present. This paper offers a strategy based on two principles: (1) layouts are based on user-defined semantic substrates, which are non-overlapping regions in which node placement is based on node attributes, (2) users interactively adjust sliders to control link visibility to limit clutter and thus ensure comprehensibility of source and destination. Scalability is further facilitated by user control of which nodes are visible. We illustrate our semantic substrates approach as implemented in NVSS 1.0 with legal precedent data for up to 1122 court cases in three regions with 7645 legal citations
Smashing Peacocks Further: Drawing Quasi-Trees from Biconnected Components
Authors: Daniel Archambault, Tamara Munzner, David Auber
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Quasi-trees, namely graphs with tree-like structure, appear in many application domains, including bioinformatics and computer networks. Our new SPF approach exploits the structure of these graphs with a two-level approach to drawing, where the graph is decomposed into a tree of biconnected components. The low-level biconnected components are drawn with a force-directed approach that uses a spanning tree skeleton as a starting point for the layout. The higher-level structure of the graph is a true tree with meta-nodes of variable size that contain each biconnected component. That tree is drawn with a new area-aware variant of a tree drawing algorithm that handles high-degree nodes gracefully, at the cost of allowing edge-node overlaps. SPF performs an order of magnitude faster than the best previous approaches, while producing drawings of commensurate or improved quality.
Software Design Patterns for Information Visualization
Authors: Jeffrey Heer, Maneesh Agrawala
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Despite a diversity of software architectures supporting information visualization, it is often difficult to identify, evaluate, and re-apply the design solutions implemented within such frameworks. One popular and effective approach for addressing such difficulties is to capture successful solutions in design patterns, abstract descriptions of interacting software components that can be customized to solve design problems within a particular context. Based upon a review of existing frameworks and our own experiences building visualization software, we present a series of design patterns for the domain of information visualization. We discuss the structure, context of use, and interrelations of patterns spanning data representation, graphics, and interaction. By representing design knowledge in a reusable form, these patterns can be used to facilitate software design, implementation, and evaluation, and improve developer education and communication
Spatial Analysis of News Sources
Authors: Andrew Mehler, Yunfan Bao, Xin Li 0003, Yue Wang, Steven Skiena
Published at InfoVis, 2006

People in different places talk about different things. This interest distribution is reflected by the newspaper articles circulated in a particular area. We use data from our large-scale newspaper analysis system (Lydia) to make entity datamaps, a spatial visualization of the interest in a given named entity. Our goal is to identify entities which display regional biases. We develop a model of estimating the frequency of reference of an entity in any given city from the reference frequency centered in surrounding cities, and techniques for evaluating the spatial significance of this distribution
The Perceptual Scalability of Visualization
Authors: Beth Yost, Chris North 0001
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Larger, higher resolution displays can be used to increase the scalability of information visualizations. But just how much can scalability increase using larger displays before hitting human perceptual or cognitive limits? Are the same visualization techniques that are good on a single monitor also the techniques that are best when they are scaled up using large, high-resolution displays? To answer these questions we performed a controlled experiment on user performance time, accuracy, and subjective workload when scaling up data quantity with different space-time-attribute visualizations using a large, tiled display. Twelve college students used small multiples, embedded bar matrices, and embedded time-series graphs either on a 2 megapixel (Mp) display or with data scaled up using a 32 Mp tiled display. Participants performed various overview and detail tasks on geospatially-referenced multidimensional time-series data. Results showed that current designs are perceptually scalable because they result in a decrease in task completion time when normalized per number of data attributes along with no decrease in accuracy. It appears that, for the visualizations selected for this study, the relative comparison between designs is generally consistent between display sizes. However, results also suggest that encoding is more important on a smaller display while spatial grouping is more important on a larger display. Some suggestions for designers are provided based on our experience designing visualizations for large displays.
Topographic Visualization of Prefix Propagation in the Internet
Authors: Pier Francesco Cortese, Giuseppe Di Battista, Antonello Moneta, Maurizio Patrignani, Maurizio Pizzonia
Published at InfoVis, 2006

We propose a new metaphor for the visualization of prefixes propagation in the Internet. Such a metaphor is based on the concept of topographic map and allows to put in evidence the relative importance of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) involved in the routing of the prefix. Based on the new metaphor we propose an algorithm for computing layouts and experiment with such algorithm on a test suite taken from the real Internet. The paper extends the visualization approach of the BGPlay service, which is an Internet routing monitoring tool widely used by ISP operators
User Interaction with Scatterplots on Small Screens - A Comparative Evaluation of Geometric-Semantic Zoom and Fisheye Distortion
Authors: Thorsten Büring, Jens Gerken, Harald Reiterer
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Existing information-visualization techniques that target small screens are usually limited to exploring a few hundred items. In this article we present a scatterplot tool for Personal Digital Assistants that allows the handling of many thousands of items. The application's scalability is achieved by incorporating two alternative interaction techniques: a geometric-semantic zoom that provides smooth transition between overview and detail, and a fisheye distortion that displays the focus and context regions of the scatterplot in a single view. A user study with 24 participants was conducted to compare the usability and efficiency of both techniques when searching a book database containing 7500 items. The study was run on a pen-driven Wacom board simulating a PDA interface. While the results showed no significant difference in task-completion times, a clear majority of 20 users preferred the fisheye view over the zoom interaction. In addition, other dependent variables such as user satisfaction and subjective rating of orientation and navigation support revealed a preference for the fisheye distortion. These findings partly contradict related research and indicate that, when using a small screen, users place higher value on the ability to preserve navigational context than they do on the ease of use of a simplistic, metaphor-based interaction style.
Visual Analysis of Multivariate State Transition Graphs
Authors: A. Johannes Pretorius, Jarke J. van Wijk
Published at InfoVis, 2006

We present a new approach for the visual analysis of state transition graphs. We deal with multivariate graphs where a number of attributes are associated with every node. Our method provides an interactive attribute-based clustering facility. Clustering results in metric, hierarchical and relational data, represented in a single visualization. To visualize hierarchically structured quantitative data, we introduce a novel technique: the bar tree. We combine this with a node-link diagram to visualize the hierarchy and an arc diagram to visualize relational data. Our method enables the user to gain significant insight into large state transition graphs containing tens of thousands of nodes. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to a real-world use case. The graph we consider models the behavior of an industrial wafer stepper and contains 55 043 nodes and 289 443 edges
Visual Exploration of Complex Time-Varying Graphs
Authors: Gautam Kumar, Michael Garland
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Many graph drawing and visualization algorithms, such as force-directed layout and line-dot rendering, work very well on relatively small and sparse graphs. However, they often produce extremely tangled results and exhibit impractical running times for highly non-planar graphs with large edge density. And very few graph layout algorithms support dynamic time-varying graphs; applying them independently to each frame produces distracting temporally incoherent visualizations. We have developed a new visualization technique based on a novel approach to hierarchically structuring dense graphs via stratification. Using this structure, we formulate a hierarchical force-directed layout algorithm that is both efficient and produces quality graph layouts. The stratification of the graph also allows us to present views of the data that abstract away many small details of its structure. Rather than displaying all edges and nodes at once, resulting in a convoluted rendering, we present an interactive tool that filters edges and nodes using the graph hierarchy and allows users to drill down into the graph for details. Our layout algorithm also accommodates time-varying graphs in a natural way, producing a temporally coherent animation that can be used to analyze and extract trends from dynamic graph data. For example, we demonstrate the use of our method to explore financial correlation data for the U.S. stock market in the period from 1990 to 2005. The user can easily analyze the time-varying correlation graph of the market, uncovering information such as market sector trends, representative stocks for portfolio construction, and the interrelationship of stocks over time.
Visualization of Barrier Tree Sequences
Authors: Christian Heine 0002, Gerik Scheuermann, Christoph Flamm, Ivo L. Hofacker, Peter F. Stadler
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Dynamical models that explain the formation of spatial structures of RNA molecules have reached a complexity that requires novel visualization methods that help to analyze the validity of these models. We focus on the visualization of so-called folding landscapes of a growing RNA molecule. Folding landscapes describe the energy of a molecule as a function of its spatial configuration; thus they are huge and high dimensional. Their most salient features, however, are encapsulated by their so-called barrier tree that reflects the local minima and their connecting saddle points. For each length of the growing RNA chain there exists a folding landscape. We visualize the sequence of folding landscapes by an animation of the corresponding barrier trees. To generate the animation, we adapt the foresight layout with tolerance algorithm for general dynamic graph layout problems. Since it is very general, we give a detailed description of each phase: constructing a supergraph for the trees, layout of that supergraph using a modified DOT algorithm, and presentation techniques for the final animation
Visualization of Geo-spatial Point Sets via Global Shape Transformation and Local Pixel Placement
Authors: Christian Panse, Mike Sips, Daniel A. Keim, Stephen C. North
Published at InfoVis, 2006

In many applications, data is collected and indexed by geo-spatial location. Discovering interesting patterns through visualization is an important way of gaining insight about such data. A previously proposed approach is to apply local placement functions such as PixelMaps that transform the input data set into a solution set that preserves certain constraints while making interesting patterns more obvious and avoid data loss from overplotting. In experience, this family of spatial transformations can reveal fine structures in large point sets, but it is sometimes difficult to relate those structures to basic geographic features such as cities and regional boundaries. Recent information visualization research has addressed other types of transformation functions that make spatially-transformed maps with recognizable shapes. These types of spatial-transformation are called global shape functions. In particular, cartogram-based map distortion has been studied. On the other hand, cartogram-based distortion does not handle point sets readily. In this study, we present a framework that allows the user to specify a global shape function and a local placement function. We combine cartogram-based layout (global shape) with PixelMaps (local placement), obtaining some of the benefits of each toward improved exploration of dense geo-spatial data sets
Visualizing Business Data with Generalized Treemaps
Authors: Roel Vliegen, Jarke J. van Wijk, Erik-Jan van der Linden
Published at InfoVis, 2006

Business data is often presented using simple business graphics. These familiar visualizations are effective for providing overviews, but fall short for the presentation of large amounts of detailed information. Treemaps can provide such detail, but are often not easy to understand. We present how standard treemap algorithms can be adapted such that the results mimic familiar business graphics. Specifically, we present the use of different layout algorithms per level, a number of variations of the squarified algorithm, the use of variable borders, and the use of non-rectangular shapes. The combined use of these leads to histograms, pie charts and a variety of other styles
Worldmapper: The World as You've Never Seen it Before
Authors: Danny Dorling, Anna Barford, Mark Newman
Published at InfoVis, 2006

This paper describes the Worldmapper project, which makes use of novel visualization techniques to represent a broad variety of social and economic data about the countries of the world. The goal of the project is to use the map projections known as cartograms to depict comparisons and relations between different territories, and its execution raises many interesting design challenges that were not all apparent at the outset. We discuss the approaches taken towards these challenges, some of which may have considerably broad application. We conclude by commenting on the positive initial response to the Worldmapper images published on the Web, which we believe is due, at least in part, to the particular effectiveness of the cartogram as a tool for communicating quantitative geographic data
3D Soft Segmentation and Visualization of Medical Data Based on Nonlinear Diffusion and Distance Functions
Authors: Bernhard Petersch, O. Serrano-Serrano, Dieter Hönigmann
Published at EuroVis, 2006

Visualization of medical 3D data is a complex problem, since the raw data is often unsuitable for standard techniques like Direct Volume Rendering. Some kind of pre-treatment is necessary, usually segmentation of the structures of interest, which in turn is a difficult task. Most segmentation techniques yield a model without indicating any uncertainty. Visualization then can be misleading, especially if the original data is of poor contrast.

We address this dilemma proposing a geometric approach based on distance on image manifolds and an alternative approach based on nonlinear diffusion. An effective algorithm solving Hamilton-Jacobi equations allows for computing a distance function for 2D and 3D manifolds at interactive rates. An efficient implementation of a semi-implicit operator splitting scheme accomplishes interactivity for the diffusion-based strategy. We establish a model which incorporates local information about its reliability and can be visualized with standard techniques. When interpreting the result of the segmentation in a diagnostic setting, this information is of utmost importance.
A Case Study: Visualizing Material Point Method Data
Authors: James Bigler, James Guilkey, Christiaan P. Gribble, Charles D. Hansen, Steven G. Parker
Published at EuroVis, 2006

The Material Point Method is used for complex simulation of solid materials represented using many individual particles. Visualizing such data using existing polygonal or volumetric methods does not accurately encapsulate both the particle and macroscopic properties of the data. In this case study we present various methods used to visualize the particle data as spheres and explain and evaluate two methods of augmenting the visualization using silhouette edges and advanced illumination such as ambient occlusion. We also present informal feedback received from the application scientists who use these methods in their workflow.
A Granular Three Dimensional Multiresolution Transform
Authors: Alireza Entezari, Tai Meng, Steven Bergner, Torsten Möller
Published at EuroVis, 2006

We propose a three dimensional multi-resolution scheme to represent volumetric data in resolutions which are powers of two, resolving the rigidity of the commonly used separable Cartesian multi-resolution schemes in 3D that only allow for change of resolution by a power of eight. Through in-depth comparisons with the counterpart resampling solutions on the Cartesian lattice, we demonstrate the superiority of our subsampling scheme. We derive and document the Fourier domain analysis of this representation. Using such an analysis one can obtain ideal and discrete multidimensional filters for this multi-resolution scheme.
A Spectral Visualization System for Analyzing Financial Time Series Data
Authors: Daniel A. Keim, Tilo Nietzschmann, Norman Schelwies, Jörn Schneidewind, Tobias Schreck, Hartmut Ziegler
Published at EuroVis, 2006

Visual data analysis of time related data sets has attracted much research interest recently, and a number of sophisticated visualization methods have been proposed in the past. In financial analysis, however, the most important and most common visualization techniques for time series data is the traditional line- or bar chart. Although these are intuitive and make it easy to spot the effect of key events on a asset's price, and its return over a given period of time, price charts do not allow the easy perception of relative movements in terms of growth rates, which is the key feature of any price-related time series.

This paper presents a novel Growth Matrix visualization technique for analyzing assets. It extends the ability of existing chart techniques by not only visualizing asset return rates over fixed time frames, but over the full spectrum of all subintervals present in a given time frame, in a single view. At the same time, the technique allows a comparison of subinterval return rates among groups of even a few hundreds of assets. This provides a powerful way for analyzing financial data, since it allows the identification of strong and weak periods of assets as compared to global market characteristics, and thus allows a more encompassing visual classification into "good" and "poor" performers than existing chart techniques. We illustrate the technique by real-world examples showing the abilities of the new approach, and its high relevance for financial analysis tasks.
Affiliation Dynamics with an Application to Movie-Actor Biographies
Authors: Ulrik Brandes, Martin Hoefer 0001, Christian Pich 0001
Published at EuroVis, 2006

We propose a visualization approach for dynamic affiliation networks in which events are characterized by a set of descriptors. It uses a radial ripple metaphor to display the passing of time and conveys relations among the different constituents through appropriate layout. Our method is particularly suitable when assuming an egocentric perspective, and we illustrate it on movie-actor biographies.
An Interactive Visualization System for Quantifying Coral Structures
Authors: Krzysztof Jakub Kruszynski, Robert van Liere, Jaap A. Kaandorp
Published at EuroVis, 2006

Determining the shape of coral structures is an essential step for coral biologists to classify and compare corals. Currently, coral biologists analyze shape by performing manual measurements on photographs of coral colonies. In this paper we describe an interactive visualization system for measuring coral shapes in a robust and quantitative way. The input of the system is a CT scan of the coral, and the output consists of statistical distributions of various morphological properties. The approach is to first extract a skeleton from the CT scan, and then to perform measurements on the skeleton graph. Interactive visualization is necessary, since various features of the coral prevent the system from being fully automatic.
Application-Oriented Extensions of Profile Flags
Authors: Matej Mlejnek, Pierre Ermes, Anna Vilanova, Rob van der Rijt, Harrie van den Bosch, Frans A. Gerritsen, M. Eduard Gröller
Published at EuroVis, 2006

A glaucoma treating composition and method of treating glaucoma by administering the glaucoma treating composition to a patient are provided. The glaucoma treating composition comprises a carbostyril derivative, or acid addition salt thereof, having an intraocular pressure reducing activity in combination with an ophthalmically acceptable carrier, the barbostyril derivative being represented by the formula: wherein R1 and R2 are each lower alkyl, and the carbon-to-carbon bond between the 3-position and the 4-position of the carbostyril skeleton is a single bond or double bond.
Automating Transfer Function Design for Volume Rendering Using Hierarchical Clustering of Material Boundaries
Authors: Petr Sereda, Anna Vilanova, Frans A. Gerritsen
Published at EuroVis, 2006

Transfer function design plays a crucial role in direct volume rendering. Furthermore, it has a major influence on the efficiency of the visualization process. We have developed a framework that facilitates the semi-automatic design of transfer functions. Similarly to other approaches we generate clusters in the transfer function domain. We created a real-time interaction with a hierarchy of clusters. This interaction effectively substitutes cumbersome settings of clustering thresholds. Our framework is also able to easily combine different clustering criteria.

We have developed two similarity measures for clustering of material boundaries. One is based on the similarity of the boundaries in the transfer function domain and the other on their spatial relation. We use the LH space as the transfer function domain. This space facilitates the clustering of material boundaries. We demonstrate our approach on several examples.
Combining Extended Table Lens and Treemap Techniques for Visualizing Tabular Data
Authors: Alexandru C. Telea
Published at EuroVis, 2006

We present a framework for visualizing large tabular data that combines two views: the table view and the treemap view. The table view extends the known table lens as follows: We cluster related elements to reduce subsampling artifacts and achieve table size independent rendering time; we use multiple-column sorting to create scenariospecific data hierarchies on the fly; and we use shaded cushions to show data structure and variation. Hierarchies built in the table view are shown in a customizable treemap view. One can choose both layout and rendering by a few clicks, effectively creating visual scenarios on-the-fly. We illustrate our framework on real-life stock data.