Visualization and Data Analysis 

Abstract: The analysis of high-dimensional data is an important, yet inherently difficult problem. Projection techniques such as Principal Component Analysis, Multi-dimensional Scaling and Self-Organizing Map can be used to map high-dimensional data to 2D display space. However, projections typically incur a loss in information. Often, uncertainty exists regarding the precision of the projection as compared with its original data characteristics. While the output quality of these projection techniques can be discussed in terms of aggregate numeric error values, visualization is often helpful for better understanding the projection results. We address the visual assessment of projection precision by an approach integrating an appropriately designed projection precision measure directly into the projection visualization. To this end, a flexible projection precision measure is defined that allows the user to balance the degree of locality at which the measure is evaluated. Several visual mappings are designed for integrating the precision measure into the projection visualization at various levels of abstraction. The techniques are implemented in an interactive system, including methods supporting the user in finding appropriate settings of relevant parameters. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach for visual analysis of classified and unclassified high-dimensional data sets. We show how our interactive precision quality visualization system helps to examine the preservation of original data properties in projected space.

Abstract: Color is one of the most important visual variables since it can be combined with any other visual mapping to encode information without using additional space on the display. Encoding one or two dimensions with color is widely explored and discussed in the field. Also mapping multi-dimensional data to color is applied in a vast number of applications, either to indicate similar, or to discriminate between different elements or (multi-dimensional) structures on the screen. A variety of 2D colormaps exists in literature, covering a large variance with respect to different perceptual aspects. Many of the colormaps have a different perspective on the underlying data structure as a consequence of the various analysis tasks that exist for multivariate data. Thus, a large design space for 2D colormaps exists which makes the development and use of 2D colormaps cumbersome. According to our literature research, 2D colormaps have not been subject of in-depth quality assessment. Therefore, we present a survey of static 2D colormaps as applied for information visualization and related fields. In addition, we map seven devised quality assessment measures for 2D colormaps to seven relevant tasks for multivariate data analysis. Finally, we present the quality assessment results of the 2D colormaps with respect to the seven analysis tasks, and contribute guidelines about which colormaps to select or create for each analysis task.

Abstract: Although there are a number of visualization systems to choose from when analyzing data, only a few of these allow for the integration of other visualization and analysis techniques. There are even fewer visualization toolkits, frameworks and developmental systems from which one can develop custom visualization applications. Even within the research community, scientists either use what they can from the available tools or start from scratch to define a program in which they are able to develop new or modified visualization techniques. This research presents a new general-purpose platform in which the design and experimentation of new visualization and analysis techniques is the focus, and where the sharing of and integration with other techniques becomes second nature. Here we introduce the Universal Visualization Platform (UVP) as a data visualization and analysis system supporting future research and modern discovery environments. Furthermore, we present a novel perspective on the Model-View-Controller programming paradigm that defines visualizations as views of models. Finally, we present a new layer model specifying the construction and manipulation of visualizations. Here, layers containing graphic elements that encode information are rendered together using composition operators to generate visual displays.

Abstract: The detection of frequently occurring patterns, also called motifs, in data streams has been recognized as an important task. To find these motifs, we use an advanced event encoding and pattern discovery algorithm. As a large time series can contain hundreds of motifs, there is a need to support interactive analysis and exploration. In addition, for certain applications, such as data center resource management, service managers want to be able to predict the next day's power consumption from the previous months' data. For this purpose, we introduce four novel visual analytics methods: {i} motif layout - using colored rectangles for visualizing the occurrences and hierarchical relationships of motifs; {ii} motif distortion - enlarging or shrinking motifs for visualizing them more clearly; {iii} motif merging - combining a number of identical adjacent motif instances to simplify the display; and {iv} pattern preserving prediction - using a pattern-preserving smoothing and prediction algorithm to provide a reliable prediction for seasonal data. We have applied these methods to three real-world datasets: data center chilling utilization, oil well production, and system resource utilization. The results enable service managers to interactively examine motifs and gain new insights into the recurring patterns to analyze system operations. Using the above methods, we have also predicted both power consumption and server utilization in data centers with an accuracy of 70-80%.