A spiral-like method to place in the space (and interact with) too many values

Abstract

Modern information systems have to support the user in managing, understanding and interacting with, more and more data. Visualization could help users comprehend information more easily and reach conclusions in relative shorter time. However, the bigger the data is, the harder the problem of visualizing it becomes. In this paper we focus on the problem of placing a set of values in the 2D (or 3D) space. We present a novel family of algorithms that produces spiral-like layouts where the biggest values are placed in the centre of the spiral and the smaller ones in the peripheral area, while respecting the relative sizes. The derived layout is suitable not only for the visualization of medium-sized collections of values, but also for collections of values whose sizes follow power-law distribution because it makes evident the bigger values (and their relative size) and it does not leave empty spaces in the peripheral area which is occupied by the majority of the values which are small. Therefore, the produced drawings are both informative and compact. The algorithm has linear time complexity (assuming the values are sorted), very limited main memory requirements, and produces drawings of bounded space, making it appropriate for interactive visualizations, and visual interfaces in general. We showcase the application of the algorithms in various domains and interactive interfaces.

RDFsim: Similarity-Based Browsing over DBpedia Using Embeddings

“…By clicking an entity in the tagCloud visualization, RDFsim refreshes the page for showing the corresponding information for that entity. In this visualization, the user can again select the desired K, but he/she cannot configure L. In the future, we plan to evaluate also alternative visualization methods for showing more values in less space, while making evident the most similar entities, for example, the recently introduced Concentric Spiral layout described in [40]. Is is also worth enriching the graph with schema information, for example, the class of each displayed entity, for making its context clearer.…”