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35. Data Visualization for Human Perception

by Stephen Few

Data visualization is the graphical display of abstract information for two purposes:
sense-making (also called data analysis) and communication. Important stories live in
our data and data visualization is a powerful means to discover and understand these
stories, and then to present them to others. The information is abstract in that it
describes things that are not physical. Statistical information is abstract. Whether it
concerns sales, incidences of disease, athletic performance, or anything else, even
though it doesn't pertain to the physical world, we can still display it visually, but to do
this we must nd a way to give form to that which has none. This translation of the
abstract into physical attributes of vision (length, position, size, shape, and color, to
name a few) can only succeed if we understand a bit about visual perception and
cognition. In other words, to visualize data effectively, we must follow design principles
that are derived from an understanding of human perception.

As the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words" - often more - but only when
the story is best told graphically rather than verbally and the picture is well designed.
You could stare at a table of numbers all day and never see what would be immediately
obvious when looking at a good picture of those same numbers. Allow me to illustrate.
Here's a simple table of sales data - a year's worth - divided into two regions:

Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.1

This table does two things extremely well: it expresses these sales values precisely
and it provides an ef cient means to look up values for a particular region and month.
But if we're looking for patterns, trends, or exceptions among these values, if we want a
quick sense of the story contained in these numbers, or we need to compare whole
sets of numbers rather than just two at a time, this table fails.

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Now look at the following picture of the same information in the form of a line graph:

Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.2

Several facts now leap into view:

Domestic sales were considerably and consistently higher than international.

Domestic sales trended upward over the year as a whole.
International sales, in contrast, remained relatively at, with one glaring exception:
they decreased sharply in August.
Domestic sales exhibited a cyclical pattern - up, up, down - that repeated itself on a
quarterly basis, always reaching the peak in the last month of the quarter and then
declining dramatically in the rst month of the next.

What these numbers could not communicate when presented as text in a table, which
our brains interpret through the use of verbal processing, becomes visible and
understandable when communicated visually. This is the power of "data visualization."

Although data visualization usually features relationships between quantitative values,

it can also display relationships that are not quantitative in nature. For instance, the
connections between people on a social networking site such as Facebook or between
suspected terrorists can be displayed using a node and link visualization. In the
following example, people are the nodes, represented as circles, and their relationships
are the links, represented as lines that connect them.

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Courtesy of Jeffrey Heer and Danah Boyd using Vizster. Copyright: CC-Att-ND (Creative Commons
Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported).
Figure 35.3

Visualizations that feature relationships between entities, such as the people in the
example above, can be enriched with the addition of quantitative information as well.
For example, the number of times that any two people have interacted could be
represented by the thickness of the line that connects them.

35.1 Data Visualization in Historical Context

People have been arranging data into tables (columns and rows) at least since the 2nd
century C.E., but the idea of representing quantitative information graphically didn't
arise until the 17th century. For this innovation we have the French philosopher and
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mathematician Rene Descartes to thank. He developed a two-dimensional coordinate

system for displaying values, consisting of a horizontal axis for one variable and a
vertical axis for another, primarily as a graphical means of performing mathematical
operations. It wasn't until the late 18th century that we began to exploit the potential of
graphics for the communication of quantitative data, for which we have the Scotsman
William Playfair to thank. Playfair pioneered many of the graphs that are commonly
used today. He was the rst person to use a line moving up and down as it progressed
from left to right to show how values changed through time, as in the example below.
He also invented the bar graph, and on one of his off days he invented the pie chart,
which we have since found relatively ineffective, because it encodes values as visual
attributes (primarily the area of each slice as well as the angle that it forms in the
center of the pie) that we cannot easily perceive and compare.

Courtesy of William Playfair (1759-1823). Copyright: pd (Public Domain (information that is common
property and contains no original authorship)).
Figure 35.4: Playfair included this graph in his The Commercial and Political Atlas
(1786) to argue against England's policy of nancing colonial wars through national
debt.

The use of quantitative graphs gradually increased over the years, but their methods
and effectiveness evolved little until the second half of the 20th century. Jacques

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Bertin laid the foundation for much of the progress that's been made during the last
half a century with the publication in 1967 of the book Semiologie graphique (The
Semiology of Graphics, Bertin 1967). His work was pivotal because he discovered that
visual perception operated according to rules that could be followed to express
information visually in ways that represented it intuitively, clearly, accurately, and
ef ciently.

The person who really introduced us to the power of data visualization as a means for
exploring and making sense of quantitative data was the Princeton statistics professor
John Tukey, who in 1977 gave form to a whole new statistical approach called
exploratory data analysis.

In 1983, the person working in the eld today whose name is recognized above all
others, Edward Tufte, published his groundbreaking book The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information. In it he pointed out that there were effective ways of
displaying data visually and then there were the ways that most people were doing it,
which didn't work very well. Also working to improve data visualization practices
around this time was William Cleveland, who extended and re ned data visualization
techniques for statisticians.

Soon thereafter, a new research specialty emerged in the academic world, which was
coined "information visualization." In their 1999 book Readings in Information
Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman
collected the best academic work that had been done by that time into a single volume
and made its discoveries accessible beyond the walls of academia (Card et al 1999).

Since the turn of the 21st century, data visualization has been popularized, too often in
tragically ineffective ways as it has reached the masses through commercial software
products. Gratefully, amongst the bevy of products that promote data visualization in
ways that feature super cially appealing aesthetics above useful and effective data
exploration, sense-making, and communication, there are a few serious contenders for
our attention who are helping us ful ll its potential in practical and powerful ways.

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Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.5: This display, consisting of multiple views of the same data set, was
created using Tableau Software, one of the few software vendors that currently
understand data visualization.

Among those who have contributed to our understanding of data visualization, Colin
Ware has done the most to base its practice on an understanding of human
perception. Ware's two excellent books - Information Visualization: Perception for
Design (Ware, 2004) and Visual Thinking for Design (Ware 2008) - compile, organize,
and explain what we have learned from several scienti c disciplines about visual
thinking and cognition and apply that knowledge to data visualization.

35.2 Pictures for the Eyes and Mind

Data visualization is only successful to the degree that it encodes information in a
manner that our eyes can discern and our brains can understand. Getting this right is
much more a science than an art, which we can only achieve by studying human
perception. The goal is to translate abstract information into visual representations
that can be easily, ef ciently, accurately, and meaningfully decoded. Consider a case
when you need to help people understand the primary causes of death in America
contained in the following table:

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Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.6

To achieve this goal, the display should achieve the following:

Clearly indicates how the values relate to one another, which in this case is a part-to-
whole relationship - the number of deaths per cause, when summed, equal all deaths
during the year.
Represents the quantities accurately.
Makes it easy to compare the quantities.
Makes it easy to see the ranked order of values, such as from the leading cause of
death to the least.
Makes obvious how people should use the information - what they should use it to
accomplish - and encourages them to do this.

The traditional way to display this information graphically involves a pie chart,
illustrated below.

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Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.7

How well does this pie chart satisfy our criteria for effectiveness? Let's consider each
of the requirements.

Clearly indicates the nature of the relationship? Yes. The primary strength of a pie
chart is the fact that it clearly indicates a part-to-whole relationship between the
values.
Represents the quantities accurately? No. Pie charts encode values redundantly
through the use of three visual attributes: the area of each slice, the angle formed by
each slice at the center of the pie, and the length of the each slice along the pie's
perimeter. Even when the area, angle, and perimeter of each slice is calculated
properly, it fails in that we cannot perceive any one of these attributes accurately.
Visual perception in humans has not evolved to support accurate decoding of areas,
angles, or distance along a curve.
Makes it easy to compare the quantities? No. Because we cannot perceive the
values accurately, we also cannot compare them easily or accurately. Furthermore,
in this particular pie chart, because a legend has been used to label the slices, we
are forced over and over to look up the meaning of the slices we wish to compare by
nding the right color, which is often dif cult to discriminate. The fact that this pie
chart has been rendered in 3-D also complicates the simple act of comparison
because the perspective skews the relative size and shape of the slices, making
slices on the bottom appear larger and more salient than similarly sized slices on
the top.
Makes it easy to see the ranked order of values? No. Even though the slices are
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displayed in ranked order from the highest value (heart disease) at the top and
continuing clockwise to the smallest, excluding the nal "All other causes" slice, this
ranking isn't obvious, because it's dif cult to compare the slices. For example, the
red cancer slice appears to be larger than the blue heart disease slice due to the 3-D
effect, which has given it more visual weight. Effects such as the 3-D rendering of
this pie chart are sometimes used to intentionally mislead.
Makes obvious how people should use the information? Partially. Although the pie
chart succeeds in encouraging people to compare the slices to understand the
relative contributions of each part to the whole, it fails to support this operation
effectively.

Given the ways in which this pie chart has failed to match human perception, let's
consider an alternative form of display. The following bar graph displays the same set
of values, but in a way that can be more readily perceived.

Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.8

Let's review the effectiveness of this bar graph using the same criteria as before.

Clearly indicates the nature of the relationship? Yes. In and of itself, a bar graph does
not declare the part-to-whole nature of the relationship between these values,
because, unlike pie charts, bar graphs can be used to display other relationships as
well. This particular bar graph, however, includes components that make the nature
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of the relationship clear, including the title ("Total Deaths...") and especially the
column of values that add up to 100%.
Represents the quantities accurately? Yes. The horizontal position at which each bar
ends and the length in relation to the quantitative scale along the x-axis both encode
these values in a way that can be accurately perceived. Unlike areas, angles, and the
lengths of curved lines that don't share a common baseline, 2-D position and the
length of straight linear objects such as these bars, which share a common baseline
and run parallel to one another are visual attributes that we can perceive with a high
degree of accuracy.
Makes it easy to compare the quantities? Yes. Because we can perceive these
values accurately when encoded as bars, it is also quite easy to compare them.
Notice how easy it is to see differences in the lengths of these bars that could not be
easily seen when comparing the slices of the pie. Also notice that when each bar
shares the same color, unlike the pie's slices, which varied in color, our eyes are
encouraged to compare the bars because of that likeness. And because the bars are
labeled directly with the names of the causes of death, we must no longer do the
work that a legend requires when comparing the values.
Makes it easy to see the ranked order of values? Yes. Because differences in the
bar's lengths are easy to perceive, the fact that they are ranked from highest to
lowest, except for the nal "All other causes" bar, is obvious. By arranging the bars in
ranked order, we've also made comparisons much easier by placing those causes of
death that are closest in value near one another in the graph.
Makes obvious how people should use the information? Yes. The fact that these
bars should be compared to understand the varying degree to which these causes of
death contribute to total deaths is intuitively obvious.

The point of comparing the perceptual effectiveness of the pie chart and bar graph has
not been to make a case against pie charts (although this case deserves to be made),
but to illustrate how we should always judge a visualization's merits by the degree to
which we can easily, ef ciently, accurately, and meaningfully perceive the story that
the information has to tell. To do this, we must understand the perceptual strengths
and weakness of various graphical means for displaying particular stories. To do this,
we must understand perception.

35.3 Data Visualization and Human Perception

Data visualization is effective because it shifts the balance between perception and
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cognition to take fuller advantage of the brain's abilities. Seeing (i.e visual perception)
which is handled by the visual cortex located in the rear of the brain, is extremely fast
and ef cient. We see immediately, with little effort. Thinking (i.e. cognition), which is
handled primarily by the cerebral cortex in the front of the brain, is much slower and
less ef cient. Traditional data sensemaking and presentation methods require
conscious thinking for almost all of the work. Data visualization shifts the balance
toward greater use of visual perception, taking advantage of our powerful eyes
whenever possible.

Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.9

One of the earliest contributions to the science of perception was made by the Gestalt
School of Psychology. The original intent of this effort when it began in 1912 was to
uncover how we perceive pattern, form, and organization in what we see. The founders
observed that we organize what we see in particular ways in an effort to make sense
of it. The result of the effort was a series of Gestalt principles of perception, which are
still respected today as accurate descriptions of visual behavior. Here are a few of the
principles that can inform our data visualization efforts:

Proximity Objects that are close together

are perceived as a group.

Similarity Objects that share similar

attributes (e.g., color or shape)
are perceived as a group.

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Enclosure Objects that appear to have a

boundary around them (e.g.,
formed by a line or area of
common color) are perceived as
a group.

Closure Open structures are perceived as

closed, complete, and regular
whenever there is a way that they
can be reasonably interpreted as
such.

Continuity Objects that are aligned together

or appear to be a continuation of
one another are perceived as a
group.

ConnectionObjects that are connected (e.g.,

by a line) are perceived as a
group.

New insights into visual perception and cognition are arising from work in various
disciplines besides information visualization, such as human factors and human-
computer interaction, but none are more ground-breaking than those arising from the
cognitive sciences, especially cognitive psychology. Today, with new and improved

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technologies and methodologies for brain exploration, opportunities to improve the

perceptual effectiveness of data visualization abound. Two areas of study in particular
are especially useful:

preattentive visual processing

mechanisms and limitations of attention and memory

One of the great strengths of data visualization is our ability to process visual
information much more rapidly than verbal information. Preattentive visual processing
is that part that automatically occurs in the brain prior to conscious awareness. It
consists of several stages, each handled by specialized neurons that are tuned to
detect particular attributes of the visual information contained in light that re ects off
the surfaces of objects in the world, which is then stitched together into a picture in our
mind's eye of that object. We can use these basic attributes, such as differences in
length, size, hue, color intensity, angle, texture, shape, and so on, as the building blocks
of data visualization. When we do so in an informed manner, we have the ability to
transfer much of the work that is needed to decode the contents of a visual display,
such as a graph, from the slower conscious, energy intensive parts of the brain to the
faster parts of the brain that require less energy, which results in more ef cient
cognition.

Studies in attention and memory are revealing our surprisingly limited ability to hold
multiple items simultaneously in awareness. This recognition leads us to augment
attention and memory by relying on external forms of information storage. One of the
most powerful ways to do this is to encode information visually, which allows more
information to be chunked together into the limited slots available in working memory.
Another method is to place several views of information in front of our eyes at one
time, thus extending our ability to explore data multidimensional and from multiple
perspectives to make comparisons and see connections to a degree that would be
impossible if we had to consume these views one at a time, due to the limits of
working memory. Good data visualization techniques and technologies, properly used,
can extend our thinking into new realms of analytical sensemaking, and we are still
only beginning to tap into this potential.

35.4 Future Directions

What's most needed in the eld of data visualization, as in other elds, is not always

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what's most exciting or not even what's particularly innovative. Sometimes we simply
need to make it easier to do those things that work. One example of this is the effort of
a few software vendors to build data visualization best practices right into the tools,
such as in the form of defaults, thereby making it easier and less time-consuming to
do what works and harder and more costly to do what doesn't. Besides these simple,
straightforward but often overlooked improvements, a few other areas offer the
potential for enrichment, such as the following:

The integration of geo-spatial and network displays (such as node and link
diagrams) with other forms of display for seamless interaction and simultaneous
use.
Technological support for collaborative data sensemaking to bring the
complementary advantage of multiple brains together.
The application of data visualization beyond descriptive statistics to the realm of
predictive analytics, such as through the use of interactive predictive visual models,
Tighter integration of data mining algorithms to nd meaningful patterns with data
visualization to provide a better way to review and explore those patterns.
Improved human-computer interface devices for interacting with data visualization
in a more rapid and seamless manner.

All of these are being pursued to some degree, but could be exploited more quickly if
more researchers focused on solving real problems that we face in the world today.

35.5 Where to Learn More

Several universities have developed graduate programs that are dedicated to the study
and advancement of data visualization. The University of Maryland, Stanford, the
University of North Carolina, the University of California, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech are
a few of the nest. Although several periodicals in the broader elds of computer
graphics and human-computer interaction include articles about data visualization,
only one academic journal features the eld exclusively: Information Visualization
Journal, published quarterly by Palgrave Macmillan. A few smaller publications focus
on making data visualization practical and accessible to a broader audience, such as
the Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter. Conferences dedicated to the eld are also
few. The oldest, IEEE's VisWeek, which includes the InfoVis and VAST (Visual Analytics
Science and Technology) sub-conferences that are dedicated entirely to data
visualization, remains the largest and perhaps best of the conferences, but signi cant
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work in the eld also appears in other conferences of broader perspective, such as CHI
(Computer-Human Interaction) and SIGGRAPH.

CHI - Human Factors in Computing Systems

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2004200320022001200019991998
1997199619951994199319921991
1990198919881987198619851983
1982

SIGGRAPH - International Conference on Computer Graphics and

Interactive Techniques
2002200120001999199819971996
1995199419931992199119901989
1988198719861985198419831982
1981198019791978197719761975
1974

InfoVis - IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization

2005200420032002200120001999
199819971995

Refreshing exceptions, including Tableau Software and TIBCO Spot re, both spin-offs
of academic work, SAS JMP, which arose from a deep understanding of statistics, and
a few other relatively small vendors, are gradually stealing the attention they deserve
from the big software companies - especially business intelligence vendors - that
dominate the market. Apart from product vendors, a few research laboratories and
consultancies are also contributing to the development and application of the eld,
including Microsoft Research, Paci c Northwest National Laboratory, Flowing Media,
Oculus Info, and Perceptual Edge.

Several good books have been written about data visualization. The following, in
chronological order, are especially useful for surveying the eld and as a source of
basic instruction:

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Tufte, Edward R. (1983): The Visual Display of All four of Tufte's books are exceptional, but
Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT, his rst is the best. It makes an inspiring case
Graphics Press
for graphical excellence.

Cleveland, William S. (1994): The Elements of Data visualization practices focused on the
Graphing Data. Hobart Press needs of statisticians.

Harris, Robert L. (2000): Information Graphics: An encyclopedic reference for information

A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference. graphics.
Oxford University Press, USA

Card, Stuart K., Mackinlay, Jock D. and An overview of the best academic research in
Shneiderman, Ben (eds.) (1999): Readings in the eld as of the publication date.
Information Visualization: Using Vision to
Think. Academic Press

Few, Stephen (2004): Show Me the Numbers: An accessible, practical, and comprehensive
Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. guide to the design of tables and graphs for
Analytics Press
communication.

Ware, Colin (2008): Visual Thinking: for An eloquent introduction to visual perception
Design. Morgan Kaufmann and cognition as it relates to data
visualization.

Few, Stephen (2009): Now You See It: Simple An accessible and practical guide to data
Visualization Techniques for Quantitative visualization for analysis.
Analysis. Analytics Press

Many blogs and online discussion forums feature data visualization - some
thoughtfully, based on expertise, and some with the shallowness that is often found on
the Web. Here are a few of the best:

[Link] (Edward Tufte)

Perceptual Edge (Stephen Few)
Eager Eyes (Robert Kosara)
Visual Complexity (Manuel Lima)
Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
Pictures of Numbers (Mike Dickison)

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Instant Cognition (Clint Ivy)

35.6 Commentary by Ronald A. Rensink

35.6.1 Four Futures and a History
Stephen Few provides a nice overview of the reasons why we should design data
visualizations to be effective, and why it's important to understand human perception
when doing so. In fact, he's done this so well that I can't add much to his arguments.
But I can, however, push the basic message a bit further, out into the times before and
after those he discusses. Out into areas that are not as well known, or not really
developed, where new opportunities and new dangers may lie...

Perhaps the best place to begin is the beginning. Discussing the beginning of
visualization is not without its problems, if only for the fact that there exist several
different kinds of visualization - for example, data visualization, information
visualization, and scienti c visualization. But whatever adjective used, we generally
nd a history more extensive than commonly imagined. For example, although
Descartes did contribute to the graphic display of quantitative data in the 17th century,
graphs had already been used to represent things such as temperature and light
intensity three centuries earlier. Indeed, as Manfredo Massironi discusses in his book
(Massironi, 2002; p. 131), quantities such as displacement were graphed as a function
of time as far back as the 11th century. But while these facts may be of interest in their
own right, the more important point is that techniques in graphic representation have
been developed over many centuries, and many of these techniques have been
subsequently forgotten - perhaps fallen out of vogue, or never found wide use to begin
with. But the reasons for their dismissal may not necessary apply in this day and age.
Indeed, several techniques might lend themselves quite well to modern technology,
and so might be worth resurrecting in one form or other. Books such as Massironi's are
helpful in discovering such possibilities.

On to the future. Or more precisely, on to ways of further developing useful

connections between visualization and psychology. To begin with, there is potential for
considerably more integration between vision and visualization than currently exists;
much more processing could be of oaded to the viewer's visual cortex. As Stephen

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Few mentions, one way of doing so is by making use of simple preattentive properties
such as length, orientation, and hue. But recent work in vision science has shown that
the preattentive level of vision contains far more visual intelligence than that. Among
other things, preattentive processes can determine shadows, extract three-dimensional
orientation, and link scattered elements of the image into uni ed groups. These
abilities could be exploited in higher-powered visualizations. Another area of recent
progress is our understanding of visual attention and scene perception. Our visual
perception of the world seems to be based on a just-in-time architecture in which
attention is directed to the right object at the right time. If the co-ordination
mechanisms involved can be handled correctly, it would open up the prospect of
"seeing" abstract datasets in a way that is as natural and effortless as seeing the
physical world. (A brief overview of these developments and their implications can be
found in Rensink, 2002.)

A related opportunity is the greater use of visual analogy (or metaphor). Here, the
emphasis is no longer on bypassing conscious thought, but on using modes of thought
best suited for reasoning about visuospatial objects and processes. For example,
when reasoning about physical force, a highly useful metaphor is the directed line, or
arrow. A more modern example is the desktop, which allows a user to reason about
possible actions on their computer. As in the case of visual perception, many - if not
most - developments to date have been based on a relatively shallow understanding of
the mechanisms involved. But given that cognitive scientists have learned much more
about metaphor, it may be time to consider its use in a more sophisticated fashion.
Ultimately, visualizations might be able to create mental images that correspond in a
natural way to the structure of any process or task. (For an interesting discussion of
this, see Paley, 2009.)

A third direction of potential importance is the creation of more powerful evaluation

methods based on the methodologies developed in experimental psychology.
Psychologists have spent centuries learning what to do (and not to do) to obtain
precise measurements of various aspects of human behaviour. It would be good to
learn from this. Of course, some of these techniques have already been adapted to
evaluation. But as in the case of cognitive and perceptual mechanisms, the transfer of
knowledge here is far from complete, and there is much that could still be done. For
example, consider evaluating how well a given scatterplot design conveys the
correlation in a dataset. In the past, this was done by presenting the viewer with the
scatterplot and asking for a numerical estimate of the (perceived) correlation. But a
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more powerful approach is to borrow the experimental methodology of measuring just

noticeable differences (jnds): the viewer is presented with two side-by-side
scatterplots, and asked to choose the more correlated one. Results based on this
approach show both precision and accuracy to be speci ed over all correlations by two
functions governed by only two parameters. As a consequence, a given scatterplot
design can be completely evaluated based on just two simple measurements. (For
details, see Rensink and Baldridge, 2010.)

A nal direction to consider - perhaps the most challenging of all - is to develop a

systematic way of ensuring that visualization designs make optimal (or at least, good)
use of human perception and cognition. In theory, this could result in a "science of
design". In practice, this might not be possible, if only because the number of possible
designs is so immense and our understanding of human cognition so incomplete. But
it may be possible to follow the example of several other areas of design, and aim for a
set of principles that would at least constrain the space of possibilities to consider. For
example, constraints based on physical forces or material properties can be applied to
any architectural design, determining whether or not it is viable. There is no a priori
reason why a similar approach would not also work for visualization. The efforts of
Bertin are perhaps a start in this direction, providing suggestions about the kinds of
graphic representation that might be applied to various kinds of problems. Work by
Tufte, Mackinlay, Ware, and others have extended this further. But however useful
these suggestions are, we are still a long way from a solid foundation for thinking
about effective visualizations. Many foundational issues are still poorly understood.
What is really going on in a visualization? Is there a way to describe this process
precisely and objectively? Is it even possible in principle to determine if a given
visualization draws upon the perceptual and cognitive resources of the viewer in an
optimal way? The answers to these questions and others like them will be dif cult to
nd. But they will determine the extent to which we can enable humans and machines
to best combine their respective strengths.

35.6.2 References
Massironi, M. (2002). The Psychology of Graphic Images: Seeing Drawing,
Communicating. Matwah NJ: Erlbaum.
Paley, W.B. (2009). Interface and mind. it – Information Technology, 51: 131-141.
Rensink, R.A. (2002). Internal vs. external information in visual perception.
Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Smart Graphics: 63-70.

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[Smart Graphics 2; Hawthorne, NY, USA.]

Rensink R.A., and Baldridge G. (2010). The perception of correlation in scatterplots.
Computer Graphics Forum, 29: 1203-1210.

35.7 Commentary by Naomi B. Robbins

Stephen Few wrote an excellent description of data visualization and the necessity for
designing graphics to take advantage of our knowledge of human perception and
cognition. In this commentary I question who is responsible for the myriad of
visualizations that ignore this knowledge: the software vendors, the software users or
others? In addition, I point out important work that deserves greater exposure on the
integration of geo-spatial and other forms of data display, a topic on Few's most-
needed list. I end with additional sources for learning more.

35.7.1 Responsibility for perceptual problems with many data

visualizations
Few's article states:

“ Since the turn of the 21st century, data visualization has been popularized,
too often in tragically ineffective ways as it has reached the masses through
commercial software products.
”
Certainly, software vendors are responsible for offering many graph forms that hinder
rather than help the reader to understand the data. The vendors offer graphs to wow
the audience rather than to communicate clearly and they create demand for
ineffective graphs. But they are not solely responsible for the myriads of graphs with
perceptual problems.

People learn from what they see and they see many ineffective graphs. The software
users then demand software that allows them to imitate these ineffective designs.
This gets us in a chicken and egg situation: Do vendors produce these awful
visualizations because their customers demand them, or do the customers become
attracted to them when they see what vendors market?

An example of the ineffective ways includes pseudo-third dimensions in bar charts.

Figure 1 shows a pseudo-three-dimensional bar chart in Excel. Almost no one reads it
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correctly. I describe other problems with this graph in Creating More Effective Graphs
[1].

Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.1: Almost no one reads this simple chart correctly. The numbers plotted are
1, 2, and 3. Plot it yourself in Excel if you don't believe me

A number of graphic artists have made major contributions to the eld of data
visualization. However, there are some graphic artists who have no appreciation of
numbers and don't realize that the representation of numbers in graphs should be
proportional to the numbers they represent. As a result, it is common to see graphs
that are not drawn to scale.

Some graph designers want to give the impression of better performance than is
actually the case and intentionally design graphs that mislead to achieve this
impression. Other graph designers may be more concerned with demonstrating their
technological abilities or artistic abilities than in communicating clearly and accurately.
Until recently, our educational system did not provide training in communicating
numbers. Today, there are some excellent courses at the college level but the majority
of people receive little, if any, training in presenting numerical information. Therefore,
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many graph designers are unaware of the principles of effective graphs. Some of the
problems occur from a lack of proofreading and careless errors.

As an analogy, a current style in fashion is high-heeled shoes. A quick search on

"dangers of high heels" revealed that there has been an increase in the number of
bunion operations on wearers of high heels as well as foot pain, back pain and neck
pain. In some cases the Achilles tendon grows shorter. Balance is affected so that the
risk of falls is greater. The list of problems goes on and on. Is the shoe designer, the
shoe manufacturer, the retail outlet that sells the shoes or the customer who buys
them responsible for this increase in medical problems? Is this situation analogous to
the data visualization one? Both cause serious problems: poor business decisions in
one case and pain and suffering as well as unnecessary medical expenses in the other.
I hope that these questions stimulate interesting discussion.

35.7.2 Integration of geo-spatial displays with other forms of display

In his section on future directions, Few mentions areas that offer the potential for
enrichment including the integration of geo-spatial displays with other forms of display
for seamless interaction and simultaneous use. Several researchers have made
advances in this area. For example, the micromap designs of Dan Carr [1] and [2] add a
geographic context to statistical information, allowing for the joint exploration of
statistical and geographic patterns in data. As illustrated in Figure 2, statistical
graphics, here dots, are linked to small maps by color. In the rst row, we can see that
Maryland is represented by red dots and so Maryland is shaded red on the right-hand
map. Sorting by poverty level, we see that not only are poverty and education inversely
related, but that there is a geographic clustering of southern U.S. states by these
variables.

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Copyright © Taylor and Francis. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions"
in the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.2: An example of a micromap design from Carr and Pickle [1]

35.7.3 Where to Learn More

Data visualization does not belong to a single academic discipline. Statisticians,
computer scientists, psychologists, graphic designers and others practice and
contribute to data visualization. The university programs and resources that Few
mentions lean heavily towards computer science. A few excellent programs joining
statistical graphics with computer science are available at George Mason University,
Iowa State, and the University of Augsburg. There are many others. I will leave it to
other commentators to add excellent programs in cognitive psychology and graphic
design. The Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, a joint publication of
the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the
Interface Foundation of North America is another academic journal on the topic. The
Statistical Computing Statistical Graphics Newsletter (SCGN) is another informal
publication. Although the Joint Statistical Meetings are not exclusively devoted to
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statistical graphics and data visualization, there are as many sessions sponsored by
the Statistical Graphics Section as many a smaller conference contains.

One addition I would make to the "what's needed" list is better communication between
the computer scientists, graphic designers, psychologists and statisticians. More joint
conferences and attending each other's conferences would help each discipline bene t
from the research of the others.

35.7.4 References
1. Carr, Daniel B. and Linda Williams Pickle. 2010. Visualizing Data Patterns with
Micromaps. Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL.
2. Carr DB, Wallin JF and Carr DA. Two new templates for epidemiology applications:
Linked micromap plots and conditioned choropleth maps. Statistics in Medicine
19:2521-38, 2000.
3. Robbins, Naomi B. 2005. Creating More Effective Graphs. John Wiley and Sons,
Hoboken, NJ.

35.8 Commentary by Robert Kosara

35.8.1 Metaphors and Interaction
One important topic Stephen Few only mentions brie y in his very well-written and
comprehensive piece is interaction. While static charts and visualizations are
undoubtedly useful, they make little use of the immense computing power that is
readily available to us today. Interaction in visualization enables the fast exploration
and discovery of data patterns that the user may not even have expected. It is also
possible to reduce the amount of data shown at the same time, providing clearer
visualizations, while still giving the user the option to get that information on demand
at any time.

Ben Shneiderman captured the role of interaction in his famous visual information
seeking mantra (Shneiderman, 1996): overview rst, zoom and lter, then details on
demand. Abstract information spaces require an overview so the user has an idea
where to even nd data, but then it is necessary to zoom in to see details. Filtering data
is important when dealing with larger datasets. Finally, details on what is shown (and
also what is not shown) can be retrieved by the user as needed. All of these steps
require interaction, where the user tells the visualization what he or she wants to see.

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35.8.2 Simple Interactions

Among the simplest interactions are tooltips or other data displays that appear when
the user points at a part of a visualization. Take the causes of death bar chart in Few’s
article above: the numbers could be shown purely on demand, perhaps including not
just percentage but total number. Also, a vertical line could be drawn from the end of
the active bar to the scale at the top, to make it easier to see the bars in context.

This type of interaction is effortless and easy to discover: just move your mouse over
the display and see if anything happens. Displaying numbers in charts is also rather
common. But the real power comes from the more advanced interactions.

35.8.3 Linking and Brushing

Brushing lets the user selects data points that get highlighted in one or more views of
the same data. When several views are involved, the fact that all of them highlight the
same data points is commonly referred to as linking (and the views are called
coordinated multiple views). Consider this example of linked bar charts of data about
passengers on the Titanic. Each bar chart represents one data dimension (class,
gender, age, and survived), and shows a histogram of how many people were in each
of the categories.

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Courtesy of Robert Kosara. Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in
the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.1

To nd out how many people survived in each category, we will select the relevant bar,
which will brush those data points in all the views. We can now compare survival rates
for different sexes, classes, etc. by looking at how much of their respective bars is
highlighted.

Courtesy of Robert Kosara. Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in
the copyright terms below.
Figure 35.2
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The mechanism is very similar for individual data points rather than summary data like
in this example. Brushing and linking make it possible to nd out high-dimensional
relationships in the data by trying out different possibilities.

35.8.4 Metaphors and Structure

Metaphors have a somewhat complicated history in visualization. There is not even a
clear understanding what a metaphor even is: many people talk about visual
metaphors when they mean different ways of depicting data, but others use them
speci cally for somewhat embellished visualizations ( owers growing to represent
traf c in chat rooms, etc.).

What I want to add here is a combination of both, perhaps best summarized as

structure: how do the relationships between elements in the visualization in uence
how people read the data? Caroline Ziemkiewicz and I have done work on this topic,
and have found that the big-picture structure plays a bigger role than most people
would assume.

When comparing different types of tree visualizations, we found that different studies
had come to different conclusions as to which method works better based on which
metaphor was used in the question: A being contained in B, or A being below B in the
hierarchy. We did a study and found that there was, indeed, a compatibility effect
between the linguistic metaphor used in the question and the visual metaphor of the
visualization (Ziemkiewicz and Kosara, 2008).

We recently showed that there is an apparent effect of gravity between objects in a

visualization that can distort the perception of distance (Ziemkiewicz and Kosara,
2010).

35.8.5 The Future

While we know a lot about how to create reasonable visualizations, there is still a lot
we do not know or are not yet aware of. Even seemingly basic knowledge like how the
layout of a visualization in uences our reading of the data still needs more work to be
understood and turned into useful recommendations and best practices.

Interaction is not exactly a new topic in visualization research, but is still rather
rudimentary in many visualization and charting programs. To really unlock the power of
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visualization, these programs will need more advanced capabilities as well as ways to
educate their users about their interactive features. Visualization has a lot more to
offer than what most people are aware of today.

35.8.6 References
Shneiderman, Ben (1996): The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for
Information Visualizations. In: VL 1996 1996. pp. 336-343.
Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Robert Kosara, The Shaping of Information by Visual
Metaphors, Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings
InfoVis), vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 1269-1276, 2008.
Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Robert Kosara, Laws of Attraction: From Perceived Forces to
Conceptual Similarity, Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
(Proceedings InfoVis), vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 1009-1016, 2010.

Experimental Methods in Human-

 Computer Interaction
Human-Robot Interaction 

Learnt something new? Share with your friends:

    

35.10 References

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The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.

BY MADS SOEGAARD AND RIKKE FRIIS DAM (EDS.)

READ OFFLINE

Read this book of ine by downloading it or buying a hardcopy version.

 PDF version 

CHAPTER CONTENTS

35 Data Visualization for Human Perception 

35.1 Data Visualization in Historical Context 

35.2 Pictures for the Eyes and Mind 

35.3 Data Visualization and Human Perception 

35.4 Future Directions 

35.5 Where to Learn More 

[Link] CHI - Human Factors in Computing Systems 

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

[Link] SIGGRAPH - International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive


Techniques

[Link] InfoVis - IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 

35.6 Commentary by Ronald A. Rensink 

35.6.1 Four Futures and a History 

35.6.2 References 

35.7 Commentary by Naomi B. Robbins 

35.7.1 Responsibility for perceptual problems with many data visualizations 

35.7.2 Integration of geo-spatial displays with other forms of display 

35.7.3 Where to Learn More 

35.7.4 References 

35.8 Commentary by Robert Kosara 

35.8.1 Metaphors and Interaction 

35.8.2 Simple Interactions 

35.8.3 Linking and Brushing 

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35.8.4 Metaphors and Structure 

35.8.5 The Future 

35.8.6 References 

35.9 User-contributed notes 

35.10 References 

AUTHOR(S)

Stephen Few

Stephen Few has over 20 years of experience as an innovator, consultant, and educator in the elds of business
intelligence (a.k.a. data warehousing and decision support) and information design. Through his company, Perceptual
Edge, he focuses on the effective analysis and presentation quantitative business information. Stephen is recognized
as a world leader in the eld of data visualization. He teaches regularly at conferences such as those presented by
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) and DCI, and also in the MBA program at the Haas School of Business at U. C.
Berkeley. He is also the author of the book "Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten"
(Analytics Press).

View pro le

COMMENTARIES BY

Ronald A. Rensink

I am interested in vision-the various ways that humans, animals, and computers use light to see. I believe that vision
involves constraints that apply to any system, and that the most successful visual systems are based on very general

information-processing strategies. As such, my approach is to examine biological systems (including humans) to

see how they operate, and then to look at these mechanisms from a computational point of view to see if they
embody more general principles. Among other things, these more general principles can provide a scienti c basis for
the design of visual interfaces that can interact with human visual systems in an optimal [Link] research interests
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the design of visual interfaces that can interact with human visual systems in an optimal [Link] research interests
include: 1. Human vision what is attention, and how does it operate? what is space, and how do we represent it? what
are objects, and how do we represent them? how are scenes represented? 2. Computational vision how do "quick an…

View pro le

Naomi B. Robbins

Naomi B. Robbins is the author of Creating More Effective Graphs, published by John Wiley (2005). She is a
consultant, keynote speaker, and seminar leader who specializes in the graphical display of data. She trains
employees of corporations and organizations on the effective presentation of data. She also reviews documents and
presentations for clients, suggesting improvements or alternative presentations as appropriate. Naomi received her
Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Columbia University, M.A. from Cornell University, and A.B. from Bryn Mawr
College. Dr. Robbins was an of cer of the Statistical Graphics Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA).
She has served the New Jersey Chapter of the ASA as President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Chair of the
Advisory Committee, and was the rst chapter member to be awarded the Chapter Service Award. She had a long…
career at Bell Laboratories before forming NBR, her consulting practice.

View pro le

Robert Kosara

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, College of Information Technology, at the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), where I am also a member of the Charlotte Visualization Center. I
received both my Ph.D. (2001) and M.S. degrees from Vienna University of Technology (Vienna, Austria). Before
coming to Charlotte, I worked at the VRVis Research Center and the in-silico pharmaceutical research company
Inte:Ligand. My research is in Information Visualization (InfoVis) and Visual Analytics. The goal of these elds is to
translate data into images that we can interact with and read to understand the underlying data.

View pro le

UPCOMING COURSE

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Conducting Usability Testing

STARTS IN
93 %
1 23 44 56 BOOKED
days hrs mins secs

VIEW COURSE

Web Design for Usability

STARTS IN
90 %
2 23 44 56 BOOKED
days hrs mins secs

VIEW COURSE

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