Pictures exploit our natural ability to quickly recognize and understand visual patterns.
The difference between an effective and a confusing presentation of the same data can be subtle, however, and often depends on the layout of the drawing. Today, the automatic generation of drawings of graphs finds many applications. In this course we will study algorithms for the automatic generation of clear and readable diagrams for complex conceptual structures. A graph is an abstract mathematical object that is used to model information. Thus, many information visualization systems require graphs to be drawn so that they are easy to read and understand.