Source of This Unit

 Material of this unit is

based on Chapter 5 of
Tamara Munzner,
Visualization Analysis and
Design, AK Peters/CRC
Press, 2014.

1
 Definitions: Marks

 A mark is a basic graphical element in an image.

 Marks are geometric primitives classified
according to the number of dimensions they
require.
 Examples: points (0D), lines (1D), areas (2D) and
volumes (3D).
 Volume marks are not commonly used.

Points – 0D Lines – 1D Areas – 2D

2
 Definitions: Channels 1/2

 A visual channel is a way to control the

appearance of marks, independent of the
dimensionality of the geometric
primitives.
 There are some commonly seen channel
types:
position, color, shape, tilt and size.
 See next slide for examples.
 There are other possible channels such as depth,
luminance, saturation, curvature, etc.
3
Definitions: Channels 2/2

also known as angle

5
 Notes: 1/3
Bar charts show two attributes,
but only one is quantitative
(vertical) and the other is
categorical

A second quantitative attribute can

be
encoded by using the visual
channel of horizontal spatial
position.
We have a 2D scatterplot.

One more categorical attribute may be added

by using the visual channel of hue (i.e.,
color)
5
 Notes: 2/3

 In these examples, each attribute is encoded with

a single channel.
 Multiple channels can be combined to
redundantly encode the same channel; however,
this approach uses more channels so that not as
many attributes can be encoded in total.
 Usually, the size and shape channels cannot be
used on all types of marks. For example,
higher- dimensional mark types may have built-
in constraints from their definitions.
6
 Notes: 3/3

 An area mark has both dimensions of its size

constrained as part of its shape. For example,
an area mark denoting a state within a country
on a geographic map already has a certain size.
 A line mark that encodes a quantitative
attribute using length in one direction can be size
coded by changing its width; however, it cannot
be sized in its length dimension.
 A point mark can be size coded for its
quantitative attribute and shape coded for its
categorical attribute. 8
 Channel Types

 The human perceptual system has two

fundamentally different kinds of sensory
modalities.
 The identity channels tell us information about
what something is or where it is. Examples:
circles, triangles, colors, in motion, inside/outside
of an area, etc.
 The magnitude channels tell us how much of
something there is. Examples:
longer/shorter, larger/smaller, brighter/darker,
etc. 8
 Mark Types: 1/2

 In a table dataset, a mark always represents an

item. For a network database, a mark may be
an item (i.e., node) or a link.
 There are two link marks: connection and
containment.
 A connection mark shows a pairwise
relationship between two items, using a line.
 A containment mark shows hierarchical
relationships using areas, and connection marks
may be nested within each other at multiple levels.
9
 Mark Types: 2/2

 In a

10
Using Marks and Channels

 The use of marks and channels in visualization

idiom design should be guided by the principles
of expressiveness and effectiveness.
 These ideas can be combined to create a ranking
of channels according to the type of data that is
being visually encoded.
 Those attributes indentified as the most
important ones should be encoded with
the highest ranked channel.

11
Expressiveness and Effectiveness: 1/2
 The expressiveness principle states that the
visual encoding should express all of, and only,
the information in the dataset attributes.
 Ordered data should be shown in a way that our
perceptual system senses as ordered.
Unordered data should not be shown in a way
that perceptually implies an ordering.
 The identity channels are the correct match for
unordered categorical attribute, and the
magnitude channels are good matches for
ordered (i.e., ordinal and quantitative) attribut1e3
Expressiveness and Effectiveness: 2/2
 The effectiveness principle states that the
importance of the attribute should match with
the salience (i.e., noticeability) of the channel.
 The most important attributes should be encoded
with the most effective channels in order to be
most noticeable.
 Less important attributes can be matched with
less effective channel.

14
 Channel Ranking

▪ states

Spatial channels are the only

ones that appear on both lists
at
the top.
None of the others are effective
for
both data types.
The above channels are for 2D, and
3D depth is a much lower 15
 Channel Effectiveness

 How do we identify the effectiveness of a channel?

 This can be analyzed according to the criteria of
accuracy, discriminability, separability,
the ability to provide visual popout, and the
ability to provide perceptual grouping.

15
 Accuracy: 1/4

 Accuracy: How close is human perceptual

judgment to some objective measurement of the
stimulus.
 Human perceive different visual channels with
different levels of accuracy; they are not all
equally distinguishable.
 Our responses to the sensory experience of
magnitude are characterized by power laws.
Most stimulus are magnified or compressed, with
few remaining unchanged.
16
 Accuracy: 2/4
magnified
▪ Human unchanged Stevens’ Psychophysical
law: S = In,
where
S is the perceived sensation
and
I is the physical intensity
n > 1 – magnified
n < 1 – compressed
n = 1 - unchanged

compressed

17
 Accuracy: 3/4

 Cleveland and McGill (1984) conducted

experiments on the magnitude channels and
found the following, from most accurate to less
accurate:
1. aligned position against a common scale
2. unaligned position against an
identical scale,
3. length
4. angled
5. area judgments being notably less
accurate 18
 Accuracy: 4/4

▪ Cleveland

This part was confirmed

by Heer and Bostock
in 2010.

19
 Discriminability: 1/4

 Discriminability: If a data attribute is encoded using a particular

visual channel, are the differences between items (of this attribute)
perceptible to the human as intended?
 The characterization of visual channel should quantify the number of
bins that are available for use within a visual channel, where each
bin is a distinguishable step or level from the other.

20
 Discriminability: 2/4

 The characterization of a visual channel should quantify the number

of bins that are available for use within a visual channel, where
each bin is a distinguishable step or level from the other.
 Example: Some channels have a very limited number of bins.
For example, changing line width past certain limit may be
perceived as an area rather than a line mark.
 Line width may be very usable for a small number of different
values but would be a poor

choice for dozens or hundreds of values. 22

 Discriminability: 3/4

 Matching the ranges of the data with the possible

sizes of a channel (i.e., the available bins).
 If it is not possible, aggregate the attribute into
meaningful bins or use a different visual channel.

23
 Discriminability: 4/4

▪ The

sized line:
only 3 sizes

sized point:
only 3 sizes

24
aggregated ranges
 Separability: 1/6

 Visual channels are not completely independent

from each other, because some have
dependencies and interactions with other.
 Consider potential interaction between visual
channels, ranging from the orthogonal and
independent separable channels to the
inextricably combined integral channels.
 Visual encoding separable channels is
straightforward but encoding different
information in integral channels will fail.
24
 Separability: 2/6

 The right plot shows a scatter plot

of of 8 points using position and
hue channels.
 It is easy to see two categories for
spatial position, left and right.
 We also separately notice their hues
and distinguish the red from blue.
 It is also easy to see half the points
fall into each of these categories for
each of the two channels.
25
 Separability: 3/6

 The right plot uses size and hue

channels.
 It is easy to distinguish the larger
half from the small half, but within
the small half discriminating
between the two colors is more
difficult.
 Therefore, size interacts with many
visual channels, including shape.

26
 Separability: 4/6

 This is an integral pair channel.

 This plot encodes one variable with
horizontal size and the other with
vertical size. This is ineffective!
 Both channels are automatically
fused into an integrated perception
of area, yielding three groups:
circles, flatten and tall ellipses.
 So, we have some significant
interference between channels.
27
 Separability: 5/6

 This is the most inseparable

channel pair, where the red and
green channels are used.
 While we can tell there are four
colors, even with an intensive effort
it may still be difficult to recover
the original information about high
and low in each axis.

28
 Separability: 5/6

 The red and green channels in the

RGB color space used by
computers is different from our
perceptual system.
 Usually, the three color channels
(i.e., red, green and blue), in
particular red and green, may not
be perceived separately.
 Hence, R, G and B may not be
perceptually separable.
29
 Separability: 6/6

 Important: Match the characteristics of the

channels to the information that is encoded.
 For two different attributes, either of which
can be attended separately, then a separable
channel pair of position and hue is good.
 If the goal is to show a single data attribute
with three categories, then the integral channel
pair of horizontal and vertical size is a
reasonable, because it yields the three groups
of small, flattened and large.
30
 Visual Popout: 1/14

 Visual Popout: Making a distinct item stands

out from many others immediately.
 Popout is also known as preattentive
processing or tunable detection.
 Our low-level visual system can help spot in
parallel the different objects from a large
number of distracting objects, without the need
for the viewer to consciously directly attention to
the item one by one.
 In fact, this capability is independent of the
number of distracting item. 32
 Visual Popout: 2/14

The red circle pops out from a small set of blue circles. 33
We recognize this instantly.
 Visual Popout: 3/14

The red circle pops out from a large set of blue circles. 34
We still can recognize this instantly.
 Visual Popout: 4/14

The red circle pops out from a small number of squares. 35

It is a bit slower than with color, though.
 Visual Popout: 5/14

The red circle also pops out from a large number of squares. 36
It is again a bit slower than with color.
 Visual Popout: 6/14

The red circle also pops out from a small set of mixed shapes and
color3s7.
 Visual Popout: 7/14

The red circle does not pop out from a large number of red squares and blue circles.
38
It can only be found by searching one by one through all the objects.
 Visual Popout: 8/14

 Popout depends on both the channel itself and

how different the target item is from its
surroundings.
 The difference between red and blue on the color
hue channel is larger than the difference in shape
between filled circles and filed squares.
 Most pairs of channels do not support popout,
but a few pairs do, such as (space, color) and
(motion, shape).
 Use one popout for a single channel at a time.
38
Visual Popout: 9/14

Many channels support visual popout:

Tilt
39
Visual Popout: 10/14

Many channels support visual popout:

Size
40
Visual Popout: 11/14

Many channels support visual popout:

Shape
41
Visual Popout: 12/14

Many channels support visual popout:

Proximity
42
 Visual Popout: 13/14

Many channels support visual popout: Shadow

Direction
43
 Visual Popout: 14/14

Parallel line pairs do not popout from a set of slightly tilted line pairs.
It has to be detected through a serial search.
44
 Visual Grouping: 1/3

 Visual Grouping can arise from either the use

of link marks or from the use of identify
channels to encode categorical attributes.
 Approach 1: Containment is the strongest cue
for grouping, with connection coming in second.
 Approach 2: Encode categorical data with
identity channels:
 All of the items that share the same level of the
attribute can be perceived by simply directing
attention to that level selectively.
 Strong as the use of containment and connection. 46
 Visual Grouping: 2/3

 Approach 3: Use proximity, placing items

within the same spatial region, because the
highest ranked channel for encoding categorical
data is spatial region.
 Approach 4: Use similarity with the other
categorical channels of hue and motion, and also
shape if chosen carefully.
 Proximity is similar to similarity; however, from a
perceptual point of view the effect of the spatial
channel is so much stronger than the effect of the
others that it is useful to consider them separately.
47
 Visual Grouping: 3/3

 Approach 4 Example: The categorical

attribute of animal type with three levels of cat,
dog and deer can be encoded with the three hue
bins of red, green and blue, respectively.
 Use the shape channel with care, because, for
example, C and Ɔ may not be automatically
perceived as selectable groupings. On the
other hand, circle versus star do!
 Also, a set of moving objects against a static
background is salient cue, multiple levels of
motion all happening at once is overwhelming.48
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 1/7

 The human perceptual system is fundamentally

based on relative judgments, not absolute ones.
 Weber’s Law: The difference in
stimulus intensity I is a fixed percentage K of
the object magnitude: I/I = K.
 Weber’s Law tells us why position along a scale
can be more accurately perceived than a pure
length judgment of position without a scale.
See next slide.

49
 Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 2/7

▪ The

The lengths of unframed, Adding a frame Aligning the bars also

unaligned rectangles of allows us to makes the judgment
slightly different sizes are compare the easier.
hard to compare very different sizes
of
the unfiled 50
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 3/7

 Our perception of color and luminance is

completely contextual, based on the contrast with
surrounding colors.
 Again, this is relative.
 See the next slide.

50
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 4/7

▪ Our

The two squares A and Superimposing a gray mask on

B the image shows that they
appear very different! are in fact almost identical

51
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 5/7

 Color perception is also relative to surrounding

colors and depends on context.
 In the images below, both cubes have tiles that
appear to be red.

52
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 6/7

 Masking the intervening context shows that the

colors are very different: with yellowish lighting,
they are orange; with bluish lighting, they are
purple.

53
Relative vs. Absolute Judgments: 7/7
 Our visual system can provide color
constancy so that the same surface is
identifiable across a broad set of illumination
conditions, even though a physical light meter
would yield very different readings
 While the visual system works well in natural
environments, many of its mechanisms work
against simple approaches to visually encoding
information with color.
 Think about the white balance mechanism in
your digital cameras. 55
The End

56
Views
View
Manipulation
 Some Initial Notes: 1/3
§ The way to change a view covers the full set of all
other design choices for idioms.
§ Any aspect of visual encoding can be changed,
including ordering, any other choice pertaining
to spatial arrangement, and the use of other
visual channels such as color.
§ Changes could be made concerning what
elements are filtered, the level of detail of
aggregation, and how the data is partitioned into
multiple views.
5
8
 Some Initial Notes: 2/3
§ A change often requires a set of items or
attributes within the visualization as input.
§ There are several choices about how a user can
select elements:
A. What kind of elements can be targets?
B. How many selection types are supported?
C. How many elements can be in the selected
set?
D. How to highlight the elements?

5
9
 Some Initial Notes: 3/3
§ Navigation is a change of viewpoint:
changing what is shown in a view based on the
metaphor of a camera looking at the scene from
a movable point of view.
§ Zooming in to see fewer items in more detail
can be done geometrically, matching the
semantics of real world motion.
§ With semantic zooming, the way to draw items
adapts on the fly based on the number of
available pixels, so appearance may change
dramatically.
6
0
Change View over Time: 1/4
§ The possibility for how the view changes can be
based on any of the other design choices of
how to construct an idiom:
A. change the encoding,
B. change the arrangement,
C. change the color,
D. change the viewpoint,
E. change which attribute are filtered,
F. change the aggregation level,
G. etc.
6
1
Change View over Time: 2/4
§ The visual encoding could be changed to a
completely different idiom.
§ Some visualization tools allow the user to
manually change between several different
idioms, such as switching from a node-
link layout to a matrix layout of a
network.
§ Giving the user control of the encoding is
particularly common in general-purpose systems
designed to flexibly accommodate a large range
of possible datasets.
6
2
 Change View over Time: 3/4

Tableau supports
changes between
visual encoding
idioms with drag
and drop interaction.

Bar chart Stacked bar chart

8
Selecting a different encoding Encoded using geographic positions
Change View over Time: 4/4
§ A view change is to alter some parameters of the
existing encoding (e.g., range of mark size).
§ Many kinds of change involve rearrangement of
some or all of the items in the view.
§ Reordering (i.e., sorting) is a powerful choice
for finding patterns in a dataset by interactively
changing attribute that is used to order the data.
§ Reordering data spatially allows us to invoke the
pattern-finding parts of our visual system to
quickly check whether the new configuration
conveys new information. 64
 Example: LineUp 1/4
§ A LineUp system is designed to support
exploration of tables with many attributes
through interactive reordering and realigning.
§ In addition to sorting by any attribute, the user
can sort by complex weighted combinations of
multiple attributes.
§ LineUp is explicitly designed do support the
comparison of multiple rankings.

65
 Example: LineUp 2/4
Slope Graphs

Customized Ranging (2012 Data) World Ranging Compressed View with

(2012 Data) a Single Summary
Bar for 2 More
Rankings (2011 &
1 1
 Example: LineUp 3/4

Classical stacked bars An attribute is selected as a baseline

Bars sorted by decreasing size separately Each attribute aligned to

in each row to emphasize the most its own baseline 12
contributing attribute
 Example: LineUp 4/4

Idiom LineUp
Data Type Table.
Derived Data Type Ordered attribute: weighted combination
of selected attributes.
Encoding Stacked bar charts, slope graphs
Task (Manipulate) Reorder, realign, animated transitions.
Task Compare rankings, distributions.

68
 Animation
§ Many kinds of change involve reducing or
increasing the amount of data that is shown:
changes to aggregation and filtering are at the
heart of interactive data reduction idioms.
§ Many kinds of changes to a view over time fall
into the general category of animation, including
changes to the spatial layout.
§ While animation has intuitive appeal to many
beginning designers, it is valuable to think
carefully about cognitive load and other trade-offs.
69
Example: Animated Transitions 1/4
§ One of the best-justified uses of animation is the
idiom of animated transition, where a series
of frames is generated to smoothly transition
from one state to another.
§ Animated transitions are an alternative to a
jump cut, where the display simply changes
abruptly from one state to the next.
§ The benefit of animated transitions is that they
help users maintain a sense of context between
the two states by explicitly showing how an item
moves to its next position.
70
Example: Animated Transitions 2/4
§ These transitions are most useful when the
amount of change is limited, because people
cannot track everything that occurs if many
items change in different ways all of the time.
§ They work well when a small number of objects
change while the rest stay the same, or when
groups of objects move together in similar ways.
§ Transitions can also be broken down into a small
number of states.

71
Example: Animated Transitions
3/4
Five frames from an animated transition of a network shown as an adjacency matrix

The data type is a compound network, where there is a cluster hierarchy associated
with the base network.

The transition shows a change from one level of hierarchical aggregation to the next,
providing more detail.

Initially, only a subset of what is visible.

The middle block gradually stretches out to fill all of the available space, and additional
structure appears within it; the other blocks gradually squish down to nothing,
with their structure gradually becoming more aggregated as the amount of 17
available screen space decreases.
Example: Animated Transitions 4/4

Idiom Animated Transitions

Data Type Compound network.
Manipulation Change with animated transition.
Navigate between aggregation levels.

73
 Select Elements
§ Allowing users to select one or more
elements of interest in a visualization is a
fundamental action that supports nearly every
interactive idiom.
§ The output of a selection operation is often the
input to a subsequent operation.
§ In particular, the change choice is usually
dependent on a previous select result.
§ We will talk about the following: selection
design choices, highlighting, selection
outcomes. 74
Selection Design Choices: 1/2
§ What can be selected: data items, links or
nodes of network data, levels within an
attribute (i.e., all items that share a unique
value for that attribute), a view of multiple
views, etc.
§ The number of independent selection
types: single selection (i.e., elements either
selected or not selected), two selections (i.e.,
mouse click for one kind and mouse hover for
the other), multiple selections (i.e., multiple kinds
of clicks – left, middle, right mouse button).
75
Selection Design Choices: 2/2
§ How many elements can be in the
selection set: If multiple elements can be
selected, can the selection only support spatially
contiguous group of items, or allow the user to
add and remove items from the selection set in
multiple passes or views?
§ For example, a visualization tool might allow the
user to interactively assign items into any of
many groups, change the name of a group, and
change the color of items in the group.

76
 Highlighting: 1/6
§ Selection is very closely related to highlighting,
where the elements that were chosen are
indicated by changing their visual appearance.
§ Selection should trigger highlighting in order
to provide users with immediate visual
feedback, to confirm that the results of their
operations match up with their intentions.
§ Two different choices can be independently
varied: the interaction idiom of how the user
selects elements and the visual encoding idiom of
how the selected elements are highlighted.
77
 Highlighting: 2/6
§ For data items, nearly any change of visual
encoding strategy can be used for highlighting
(i.e., changing its color). But note that the
highlight color should be sufficiently different
from the other colors that a visual popout effect is
achieved with sufficient hue, luminance, or
saturation contrast.
§ A fundamental limitation of highlighting by
color change is that the existing color coding is
temporarily hidden.

78
 Highlighting: 3/6
§ One way to overcome this problem is to highlight
with an outline (i.e., adding an outline mark
around the selected object or changing the color
of an existing outline mark to the highlight color).
§ For large marks, this works effectively, but when
marks are small, this may not provide enough
visual salience.
§ Another solution is to use the size channel (e.g.,
increasing an item’s size or linewidth of a
link).
§ It is also common to highlight with the shape 79
channel (i.e., changing a solid line to a dash one).
 Highlighting: 4/6
§ Another design choice is to use motion coding:
ØMoving all selected points in small circular
orbits oscillating around their usual location,
ØMoving all selected items slightly back and
forth relative to their original position,
ØHaving a dash pattern crawl along selected
links.
§ Although this choice looks unusual, experiments
have shown that motion coding often
outperformed more traditional highlighting
approaches of coloring, outlining, size changes).25
 Highlighting: 5/6
§ Yet another choice for highlighting is to add
connection marks (i.e., context-preserving visual
links) between the objects in the selection set.

81
 Highlighting: 6/6

Idiom Context-Preserving Visual Links

Data Type Any Data.
Encoding Any encoding.
Highlight with link marks connecting
items across views.
Task (Manipulate) Select any element.
Task (Coordinate) Juxtaposed multiple views.

82
 Selection Outcomes
§ Sometimes the outcome of selection is additional
actions, beyond simply highlighting.
§ Selection is usually the first step in a multistage
sequence, allowing the user to indicate specific
elements that are the target of the next action.
ØSelected items might be filtered or aggregated,
or their visual encoding could be changed.
ØA selected set of regions or items might be
reordered with a view.
ØA navigation trajectory could be
constructed
of an animated transition. 28
Navigate: Changing Viewpoint
§ Large and complex datasets often cannot be
understood from only a single point of
view.
§ Navigation means to changing the point
of view from which things are drawn.
§ When the camera viewpoint is changed, the set
of items visible in the camera frame also
changes.
§ Navigation can be broken down into three
components: zooming, panning (2D)
and translating (3D), and rotating.

8
4
 Geometric Zooming
§ Geometric zooming corresponds almost
exactly with our real-world experience of
walking close to objects, or grasping objects with
our hands and moving them closer to our eyes.
§ In the 2D case, it is moving a piece of paper
closer or farther from our eyes, while keeping it
parallel to our face.
§ With geometric zooming, the fundamental
appearance of objects is fixed, and moving the
view point simply changes the size and
perspective at which they are drawn.

8
5
 Semantic Zooming: 1/5
§ With semantic zooming, the representation
of the object adapts to the number of pixels
available in the region occupied by the object.
§ The visual appearance of an object can change
subtly or dramatically at different scales.
§ Example: A visual representation of a text file
may always be rectangular, but its contents
could change considerably. If the box is small, it
would contain a short text label. A medium-
size box could contain the full file title. A large
box could accommodate a multi-line summary.

8
6
Semantic Zooming: 2/5
§ LiveRAC is a visualization system for analyzing
large collections of time-series data.
§ Line charts in a very large grid use semantic
zooming, automatically adapting to the amount
of space available as rows and columns are
stretched and squished.

8
7
Semantic Zooming: 3/5
§ When the available box is tiny, only a single
categorical variable is shown with color
coding.
§ Slightly larger boxes also use sparklines, very
concise line charts with dots marking the
minimum and maximum for that time period.
§ As the box size passes thresholds, axes are drawn
and multiple line charts are superimposed.
§ This stretch-and-squish navigation idiom is an
example of a focus+context approach.

8
8
Semantic Zooming: 4/5

8
9
Constrained Navigation: 1/5
§ With unconstrained navigation, the
camera can move anywhere. However, users
often have difficulty figuring out how to achieve
a desired viewpoint with completely free
navigation, especially in 3D.
§ It is easy to inadvertently move the view point
inside objects that are intended to be solid.
§ It is also possible that the camera may pointed at
nothing at all.

9
0
 Constrained Navigation: 2/5
§ Be aware of perspective distortion in 3D. Moving
camera closer exaggerates near objects.

Camera moved
away from the
red ball

Two balls of equal size with Camera very far from

the red one closer to the both balls
camera

9
1
Constrained Navigation: 3/5
§ With constrained navigation, the
movement of camera has some limit on the
motion (e.g., can only be moved in certain region,
zoom can only be applied to certain range, etc.)
§ Camera may also be restricted to a selected path
along which the scene can be viewed in the best
way (e.g., less clutter and occlusion).
§ Constrained navigation is particularly powerful
when linked navigation between multiple views
(e.g., a tabular or list view being sorted by
some attributes).

9
2
Constrained Navigation: 4/5

FlowTour is able to generate a tour, a cubic spline

curve,
for the camera to follow.

With this tour following, an animated transition from

viewpoint to viewpoint for better viewing
the Selected item, thus maintaining context.
39
Jun Ma, et. al.
Constrained Navigation: 5/5

From viewpoint (b) From viewpoint (c) From viewpoint (d)

From viewpoint (e) From viewpoint (f) From viewpoint (g) 40

Navigate: Reducing Attributes
§ The geometric intuitions that underlie the
metaphor of navigation with a camera also lead
to a set of design choices for reducing the
number of attributes: slice, cut and
project.
§ Although these idioms are inspired by ways to
manipulate a camera in a 3D scene, they also
generalize to higher-dimensional spaces.
§ In what follows, we shall use dimensions instead
of the synonym attributes.

9
5
Reducing Attributes: Slice 1/3
§ With the slice design choice, a single value is
chosen from the dimension to eliminate, and only
the items matching that value for the dimension
are extracted to include in the lower-dimensional
slice.
§ Slicing is a very intuitive metaphor when
reducing spatial data from 3D to 2D.

9
6
Reducing Attributes: Slice 2/3
Axis-aligned cut

Axis-aligned slice

The slice choice eliminates a dimension/attribute by extracting only the items

43
with a chosen value in that dimension.
Reducing Attributes: Slice 3/3
§ Slices do not have to be axial. But, one benefit of
axis-aligned slices is that they may correspond to
views that are familiar to the viewer.
§ It is possible to slice along a plane at an
arbitrary orientation that does not match the
original axis.
§ Slicing is not restricted to a change from 3D to
2D. The slicing plane could be a hyperplane,
the higher-dimensional version of a plane.

9
8
Reducing Attributes: Cut 1/3
§ The interaction idiom of cut allows the user to
position a plane that divides the viewing volume
into two, and everything on the side that contains
the camera will not be shown.
§ This cutting plane can either be axis-aligned
or arbitrarily oriented just like the slices.
§ The cut design choice shows more information
than just the 2D slice alone, because the
surrounding 3D context behind the cutting plane
is also visible.

9
9
Reducing Attributes: Cut 2/3
Axis-aligned cut

Axis-aligned slice

With cut, the surrounding 3D context is visible.

1
0
0
Reducing Attributes: Cut 3/3

Axis-aligned cut

With cut, the surrounding

3D context is visible.

1
0
1
Reducing Attributes: Project 1/5
§ With the project design choice, all items are
shown, but without the information for specific
dimensions chosen to exclude.
§ There are three commonly used projections:
orthographic projection,
perspective projection, and map
projection.
§ Orthographic projection: for each item the
values for excluded dimensions are dropped.

1
0
2
Reducing Attributes: Project 2/5

49
Taken from the Internet
Reducing Attributes: Project 3/5
§ Perspective projection also projects from
3D to 2D, with the camera position at a finite point.

Brook Taylor New Principles of Linear Perspective ， 4th 50

edition ，
J. Taylor, London, England
Reducing Attributes: Project 4/5
§ Map projections project from the surface to
a plane, and have been proposed by
cartographers, including the well-known
Mercator projection.
§ These projections transform from a curved to a
flat space, and most of the design choices when
creating them concern whether distorting angles
or areas is less problematic for the intended
abstract task.

51
Reducing Attributes: Project 5/5

Dylan Prentiss, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barb5a2ra