Data sampling has been extensively studied for large scale graph mining. Many analyses and tasks become more efficient when performed on graph samples of much smaller size. The use of proxy objects is common in software engineering for analysis and interaction with heavy objects or systems. In this paper, we coin the term 'proxy graph' and empirically investigate how well a proxy graph visualization can represent a big graph. Our investigation focuses on proxy graphs obtained by sampling; this is one of the most common proxy approaches. Despite the plethora of data sampling studies, this is the first evaluation of sampling in the context of graph visualization. For an objective evaluation, we propose a new family of quality metrics for visual quality of proxy graphs. Our experiments cover popular sampling techniques. Our experimental results lead to guidelines for using sampling-based proxy graphs in visualization.

Traditionally, graph quality metrics focus on readability, but recent studies show the need for metrics which are more specific to the discovery of patterns in graphs. Cluster analysis is a popular task within graph analysis, yet there is no metric yet explicitly quantifying how well a drawing of a graph represents its cluster structure. We define a clustering quality metric measuring how well a node-link drawing of a graph represents the clusters contained in the graph. Experiments with deforming graph drawings verify that our metric effectively captures variations in the visual cluster quality of graph drawings. We then use our metric to examine how well different graph drawing algorithms visualize cluster structures in various graphs; the results confirm that some algorithms which have been specifically designed to show cluster structures perform better than other algorithms.

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Symmetry is an important aesthetic criteria in graph drawing and network visualisation. Symmetric graph drawings aim to faithfully represent automorphisms of graphs as geometric symmetries in a drawing.In this paper, we design and implement a framework for quality metrics that measure symmetry, that is, how faithfully a drawing of a graph displays automorphisms as geometric symmetries. The quality metrics are based on geometry (i.e. Euclidean distance) as well as mathematical group theory (i.e. orbits of automorphisms).More specifically, we define two varieties of symmetry quality metrics: (1) for displaying a single automorphism as a symmetry (axial or rotational) and (2) for displaying a group of automorphisms (cyclic or dihedral). We also present algorithms to compute the symmetric quality metrics in O(n log n) time for rotational symmetry and axial symmetry.We validate our symmetry quality metrics using deformation experiments. We then use the metrics to evaluate a number of established graph drawing layouts to compare how faithfully they display automorphisms of a graph as geometric symmetries.