right|400px|parallel coordinates  parallel coordinates is a common way of visualizing high-dimensional geometry and analyzing multivariate data. to show a set of points in an n-dimensional space, a backdrop is drawn consisting of n parallel lines, typically vertical and equally spaced. a point in n-dimensional space is represented as a polyline with vertices on the parallel axes; the position of the vertex on the ith axis corresponds to the ith coordinate of the point. this visualization is closely related to time series visualization, except that it is applied to data where the axes do not correspond to points in time, and therefore do not have a natural order. therefore, different axis arrangements may be of interest. == history == parallel coordinates were often said to be invented by philbert maurice d'ocagne (fr) in 1885, but even though the words "coordonnÃ©es parallÃ¨les" appear in the book title this work has nothing to do with the visualization techniques of the same name (the book only describes a method of coordinate transformation, see fulltext pdf of the book by clicking the link in the references). but even before 1885, parallel coordinates have been used, for example in henry gannetts "general summary, showing the rank of states, by ratios, 1880", or afterwards in henry gannetts "rank of states and territories in population at each census, 1790-1890" in 1898. it became popular again 79 years later by al inselberg  in 1959 and systematically developed as a coordinate system starting from 1977. some important applications are in collision avoidance algorithms for air traffic control (1987â3 usa patents), data mining (usa patent), computer vision (usa patent), optimization, [[
Multi-dimensional_geometry Statistical_charts_and_diagrams Visualization_(graphic)