Data Visualization

Data Visualization
• Data visualization is the
process of creating a visual
representation of the
information within a dataset.
Most common techniques:
Pie charts, Bar charts,
Histograms, Gantt charts, Heat
maps, Box-and-whisker plots,
Waterfall charts, Area charts,
Scatter plots, Infographics,
Maps
Tools: Tableau, PowerBI, R, Python
Data Visualization
• Why data visualization?
• Gain insight into an information space by mapping data onto graphical primitives
• Provide qualitative overview of large data sets
• Search for patterns, trends, structure, irregularities, relationships among data
• Help find interesting regions and suitable parameters for further quantitative
analysis
• Provide a visual proof of computer representations derived
• Categorization of visualization methods:
• Pixel-oriented visualization techniques
• Geometric projection visualization techniques
• Icon-based visualization techniques
• Hierarchical visualization techniques
• Visualizing complex data and relations

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Pixel-Oriented Visualization Techniques
• For a data set of m dimensions, create m windows on the screen, one for each
dimension
• The m dimension values of a record are mapped to m pixels at the corresponding
positions in the windows
• The colors of the pixels reflect the corresponding values

(a) Income (b) Credit (c) transaction (d) age

Limit volume 4
Laying Out Pixels in Circle Segments
• To save space and show the connections among multiple dimensions, space
filling is often done in a circle segment

(a) Representing a data

(b) Laying out pixels in circle
record in circle segment
segment
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Geometric Projection Visualization Techniques
• Visualization of geometric transformations and projections of the
data
• Methods
• Direct visualization
• Scatterplot and scatterplot matrices
• Landscapes
• Projection pursuit technique: Help users find meaningful
projections of multidimensional data
• Hyperslice
• Parallel coordinates

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Direct Data Visualization
Ribbons with Twists Based on Vorticity

Data Mining: Concepts and 7

Techniques
Scatterplot Matrices

Used by ermission of M. Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Matrix of scatterplots (x-y-diagrams) of the k-dim. data [total of (k2/2-k) scatterplots]

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Landscapes

Used by permission of B. Wright, Visible Decisions Inc.

news articles
visualized as
a landscape

• Visualization of the data as perspective landscape

• The data needs to be transformed into a (possibly artificial) 2D spatial
representation which preserves the characteristics of the data
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Parallel Coordinates
• n equidistant axes which are parallel to one of the screen axes and
correspond to the attributes
• The axes are scaled to the [minimum, maximum]: range of the corresponding
attribute
• Every data item corresponds to a polygonal line which intersects each of the
axes at the point which corresponds to the value for the attribute

• • •

Attr. 1 Attr. 2 Attr. 3 Attr. k

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Parallel Coordinates of a Data Set

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Icon-Based Visualization Techniques
• Visualization of the data values as features of icons
• Typical visualization methods
• Chernoff Faces
• Stick Figures
• General techniques
• Shape coding: Use shape to represent certain information
encoding
• Color icons: Use color icons to encode more information
• Tile bars: Use small icons to represent the relevant feature
vectors in document retrieval
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Chernoff Faces
• A way to display variables on a two-dimensional surface, e.g., let x be
eyebrow slant, y be eye size, z be nose length, etc.
• The figure shows faces produced using 10 characteristics--head eccentricity,
eye size, eye spacing, eye eccentricity, pupil size, eyebrow slant, nose size,
mouth shape, mouth size, and mouth opening): Each assigned one of 10
possible values, generated using Mathematica (S. Dickson)

• REFERENCE: Gonick, L. and Smith, W.

The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. New York:
Harper Perennial, p. 212, 1993
• Weisstein, Eric W. "Chernoff Face." From
MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource.
mathworld.wolfram.com/ChernoffFace.html
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 Stick Figure
A census data
figure showing
age, income,
used by permission of G. Grinstein, University of Massachusettes at Lowell

gender,
education, etc.

A 5-piece
stick figure (1
body and 4
limbs w.
different
angle/length)
Two attributes mapped to axes, remaining attributes mapped to angle or length of limbs”. Look at
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Hierarchical Visualization Techniques

• Visualization of the data using a hierarchical partitioning into

subspaces
• Methods
• Dimensional Stacking
• Worlds-within-Worlds
• Tree-Map
• Cone Trees
• InfoCube

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Dimensional Stacking
attribute 4
attribute 2

attribute 3

attribute 1

• Partitioning of the n-dimensional attribute space in 2-D

subspaces, which are ‘stacked’ into each other
• Partitioning of the attribute value ranges into classes. The
important attributes should be used on the outer levels.
• Adequate for data with ordinal attributes of low cardinality
• But, difficult to display more than nine dimensions
• Important to map dimensions appropriately
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Dimensional Stacking
Used by permission of M. Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Visualization of oil mining data with longitude and latitude mapped to the
outer x-, y-axes and ore grade and depth mapped to the inner x-, y-axes
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Worlds-within-Worlds
• Assign the function and two most important parameters to innermost world
• Fix all other parameters at constant values - draw other (1 or 2 or 3
dimensional worlds choosing these as the axes)
• Software that uses this paradigm

• N–vision: Dynamic
interaction through data
glove and stereo displays,
including rotation, scaling
(inner) and translation
(inner/outer)
• Auto Visual: Static
interaction by means of
queries

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Tree-Map
• Screen-filling method which uses a hierarchical partitioning of the
screen into regions depending on the attribute values
• The x- and y-dimension of the screen are partitioned alternately
according to the attribute values (classes)

MSR Netscan Image

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Ack.:
Tree-Map of a File System (Schneiderman)

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InfoCube
• A 3-D visualization technique where hierarchical
information is displayed as nested semi-transparent
cubes
• The outermost cubes correspond to the top level data,
while the subnodes or the lower level data are
represented as smaller cubes inside the outermost
cubes, and so on

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Three-D Cone Trees
• 3D cone tree visualization technique works well
for up to a thousand nodes or so
• First build a 2D circle tree that arranges its
nodes in concentric circles centered on the root
node
• Cannot avoid overlaps when projected to 2D
• G. Robertson, J. Mackinlay, S. Card. “Cone Trees:
Animated 3D Visualizations of Hierarchical
Information”, ACM SIGCHI'91
• Graph from Nadeau Software Consulting
website: Visualize a social network data set that
models the way an infection spreads from one
person to the next
Ack.: http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/visualization 22
Visualizing Complex Data and Relations
• Visualizing non-numerical data: text and social networks
• Tag cloud: visualizing user-generated tags
 The importance
of tag is
represented by
font size/color
 Besides text data,
there are also
methods to
visualize
relationships, such
as visualizing social
networks
Newsmap: Google News Stories in