An Updated Guide to the Visualization of Data for Designers, Users, and Researchers Interactive Data Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications, Second Edition provides all the theory, details, and tools necessary to build visualizations and systems involving the visualization of data. In color throughout, it explains basic terminology and concepts, algorithmic and software engineering issues, and commonly used techniques and high-level algorithms. Full source code is provided for completing implementations. New to the Second Edition New related readings, exercises, and programming projects Better quality figures and numerous new figures New chapter on techniques for time-oriented data This popular book continues to explore the fundamental components of the visualization process, from the data to the human viewer. For developers, the book offers guidance on designing effective visualizations using methods derived from human perception, graphical design, art, and usability analysis. For practitioners, it shows how various public and commercial visualization systems are used to solve specific problems in diverse domains. For researchers, the text describes emerging technology and hot topics in development at academic and industrial centers today. Each chapter presents several types of exercises, including review questions and problems that motivate readers to build on the material covered and design alternate approaches to solving a problem. In addition, programming projects encourage readers to perform a range of tasks, from the simple implementation of algorithms to the extension of algorithms and programming techniques. Web ResourceA supplementary website includes downloadable software tools and example data sets, enabling hands-on experience with the techniques covered in the text. The site also offers links to useful data repositories and data file formats, an up-to-date listing of software packages and vendors, and instructional tools, such as reading lists, lecture slides, and demonstration programs.

With the increase in the amount and dimensionality of scientific data collected, new approaches to the design of displays of such data have become essential. The designers of visual and auditory displays of scientific data seek to harness perceptual processes for data exploration. The general aim is to provide ways for raw data, and the statistical and mathematical structures they comprise, to "speak for themselves" and, thereby, enable scientists to conduct exploratory, in addition to confirmatory analyses of their data. The present primary approach via visualization depends mainly on coding data as positions of visually distinguishable elements in a two- or three- dimen sional euclidean space, e.g., as discrete points comprising clusters in scatter-plot displays and as patches comprising the hills and valleys of statistical surfaces. These displays are immensely effective because the data are in a form that evokes natural perceptual processing of the data into impressions of the presence and spatial disposition of apparent materials, objects, and structures in the viewers apparent physical environment. The problem with this mode of display, however, is that its perceptual potency is largeiy exhausted at dimension three, while we increasingly face the need to explore data of much greater dimensionality. The challenge posed for visualization researchers is to develop new modes of display that can push the dimensionality of data displays higher while retaining the kind of perceptual potency needed for data exploration.

An Updated Guide to the Visualization of Data for Designers, Users, and Researchers Interactive Data Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications, Second Edition provides all the theory, details, and tools necessary to build visualizations and systems involving the visualization of data. In color throughout, it explains basic terminology and concepts, algorithmic and software engineering issues, and commonly used techniques and high-level algorithms. Full source code is provided for completing implementations. New to the Second Edition New related readings, exercises, and programming projects Better quality figures and numerous new figures New chapter on techniques for time-oriented data This popular book continues to explore the fundamental components of the visualization process, from the data to the human viewer. For developers, the book offers guidance on designing effective visualizations using methods derived from human perception, graphical design, art, and usability analysis. For practitioners, it shows how various public and commercial visualization systems are used to solve specific problems in diverse domains. For researchers, the text describes emerging technology and hot topics in development at academic and industrial centers today. Each chapter presents several types of exercises, including review questions and problems that motivate readers to build on the material covered and design alternate approaches to solving a problem. In addition, programming projects encourage readers to perform a range of tasks, from the simple implementation of algorithms to the extension of algorithms and programming techniques. Web ResourceA supplementary website includes downloadable software tools and example data sets, enabling hands-on experience with the techniques covered in the text. The site also offers links to useful data repositories and data file formats, an up-to-date listing of software packages and vendors, and instructional tools, such as reading lists, lecture slides, and demonstration programs.