A Compositional Model for Multidimensional Data Visualisation

摘要

This paper presents a model for constructing complex visualisation instances by describing them as a set of smaller interconnected modules. The module-relationship structure of the model allows users to explore a given visualisation instance a piece at a time, and then to relate modules to one another to explore the data more deeply. This is known as compositional visualisation. Each module is a visualisation in itself and represents some aspect or view of the data. When a number of such smaller visualisation views are considered conjunctively the result is a broader view of the data that includes the aspects provided by each module. Compositional visualisation is one technique for dealing with data that is too large or complex to visualise using a single visualisation. The model first decomposes data into a collection of simpler data modules. The data modules are then mapped to simple visualisation modules. The visualisation modules are combined to form larger visualisation instances. However, the decomposition of data is not necessarily equivalent to the composition of visualisation, thus a visualisation may give a false impression of data if poorly constructed. The reasons for this and ways to overcome it are presented.