Comments on: Frame Network Challenge Preview 2

By: faisal

faisal — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:39:50 +0000

The use of circle rings and wedges to compare multiple information is a neat idea. It not only gives an overall picture by comparing networks but also provides fine grained information about nodes across two different dimensions(within network and across network). Our group had a similar idea to use rings to show node relative strength. In this case wedges represent a node and ring a network.

The matrix view in the last visualization actually look pretty nice than the other two groups’ matrix view. But I do remember from their presentation that this is not on the actual epistemic frame data?

By: watkins

watkins — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:54:44 +0000

I think the second design is the easiest to interpret. Like some people in the comments above me, I think the biggest drawback of the first visualization is that it’s hard to compare 1) matrices that are across the wheel from each other and 2) variables that are close to the center of the wheel. If there was some way to clearly distinguish the related portions of the circle, it would be a great way to show lots of information in a quick snapshot view.

I think the significance of the third design isn’t the design itself, but the idea that the dataset itself can be simplified pretty dramatically before we even start to think of visualization designs. If we can automatically reduce the data to 2 or 3 dimensions without losing anything important, that makes the design problem easier for everyone!

By: Jim Hill

Jim Hill — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:12:15 +0000

I agree that the outer circles in the first visualization skew the meaning a little. It’s definitely difficult to see what’s going on at the middle. Perhaps starting the data at halfway along the radius and leaving the center blank would help.

The second visualization makes sense to me. I like the idea of converting the matrix into a vector, that seems intuitive and provides a different way of looking at the data.

I have to admit that I’m a little rusty on my linear algebra so the third visualization is a little over my head and I’m not sure how to interpret it.

By: lyalex

lyalex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:59:49 +0000

I like the style of all the three design. However, there might be slight problems within design 1 and 2. Design 1 might be good at revealing relationships between adjacent sectors, but the ability decreases when the two sectors are not together. Design 2 might have the same problem. For example, I can tell by my eyes that Ism_pract and Pract4 might have very high correlation rates, but the distance between them prohibits me identifying it quickly.

By: lyalex

lyalex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:47:32 +0000

In reply to Shuang. I think that is because the diagonal value of the original data does not means anything, so they are coding it as "no meaning".

By: Jeremy White

Jeremy White — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:56:39 +0000

Using two or more hues to represent values ranging from 0 to 1 may not be necessary and may also add unwanted visual complexity. Showing all of the values at once is certainly a good way to give an overall impression and look for areas of interest, but showing a scale down version initially, while allowing the user to scale and explore, might help reduce the size.

The ability to rotate the entire visualization (for the rectangular versions) might be a nice feature so that the potential patterns/clusters can be evaluated horizontally and vertically.

By: Shuang

Shuang — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:15:47 +0000

The heatmap is quite neat and it directly shows the relationship among factors. Like other posts, I would suggest another color spectrum.

For the last visualization, I wonder why the original data (Figure 1) has a diagonal with different colors. Figure 2 shows the magnitude eigenvalues. I think vertical lines can be a better choice since the length can represent the magnitude of the value. A quick question: do we need assumption to ensure all the eigenvalues are real instead of imaginary?

By: Adrian Mayorga

Adrian Mayorga — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:28:33 +0000

First a comment on the color ramps. Blue-red is really hard to tell apart, so maybe another color spectrum would be better? Also, instead of using a continuous one, I think binning the ramp would be easier to tell apart. Sine you can see the exact values when you mouse over, you really don’t loose that much information.

I like the fact that in the first two, many different matrices can be compared. However, if each individual matrix has many dimensions, things start to get a bit hard.

The eigenvalue based visualizations give a nice statistical snapshot of an individual matrix, but it is unclear to me how you would compare different matrices with these techniques.

By: turetsky

turetsky — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:24:37 +0000

In the first visualization, I feel that the inherent issue of the outer circles having more area in the arches could give rise to an idea that there possible more in the arch. It’s just the nature of using wedges. I like how you can easily compare between matrices.

I like the second visualization as a heat map of the matrices and pairings, rather than the data of the matrices themselves. I think this one could be very useful.

The multiple views in the third dataset are nice. I like the idea of finding a property of the matrix itself and observing that, rather than the raw data.

By: ChamanSingh

ChamanSingh — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:55:50 +0000

Nice efforts in all the three visual representations, but in my opinion, one thing that all of them is missing is “Simplicity”, specially the first and third one. For both first and third, a nice paragraph is required to interpret the colors.

The second one could be improved further by use of light contrasting colors.

Overall, good efforts for this complex problem.