Visual Data Mining with Information Visualization

Data visualization is the graphical display of abstract information for two purposes: sense-making (also called data analysis) and communication. Important stories live in our data and data visualization is a powerful means to discover and understand these stories, and then to present them to others. In this paper, we propose a classification of information visualizationand visual data mining techniques which is based on the data type to be visualized, the visualization technique and the interaction and distortion technique. We exemplify the classification using a few examples, most of them referring to techniques and systems presented in this special issue

Information Visualization and Visual Data Mining

Data visualization is the graphical display of abstract information for two purposes: sense-making (also called data analysis) and communication. Important stories live in our data and data visualization is a powerful means to discover and understand these stories, and then to present them to others. In this paper, we propose a classification of information visualization and visual data mining techniques which is based on the data type to be visualized, the visualization technique and the interaction and distortion technique. We exemplify the classification using a few examples, most of them referring to techniques and systems presented in this special issue

Design and evaluation of improvement method on the Web information navigation - a stochastic search approach

With the advent of fast growing Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), more and more companies start the electronic commerce to enhance the business competitiveness. On the other hand, more and more people surf on the Web for information gathering/processing. Due to unbalanced traffic and poorly organized information, users suffer the slow communication and disordered information organization. The information provider can analyze the traffic and uniform resource locator (URL) counters to adjust the organization; however, heterogeneous navigation patterns and dynamic fluctuating Web traffic make the tuning process very complicated. Alternatively the user may be provided with guidance to navigate through the Web pages efficiently. In this paper, a Web site was modeled as a Markov chain associated with the corresponding dynamic traffic and designated information pages. We consider four models: inexperienced surfers on guidance-less sites, experienced surfers on guidance-less sites, sites with the mean-length guidance, and sites with the known-first-arc guidance (generalized as sites with dynamic stochastic shortest path guidance). Simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the different types of navigation guidance. We also propose a reformulation policy to highlight the hyperlinks as steering guidance. The evolution on complexity and applicability is also discussed for the design guideline of general improvement methods. The paper concludes with the summary and future directions.published_or_final_versio

Design and evaluation of improvement method on the web information navigation - A stochastic search approach

With the advent of fast growing Internet and World Wide Web (the Web), more and more companies enhance the business competitiveness by conducting electronic commerce. At the same time, more and more people gather or process information by surfing on the Web. However, due to unbalanced Web traffic and poorly organized information, users suffer from slow communication and disordered information. To improve the situation, information providers can analyze the traffic and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) counters to adjust the information layering and organization; nevertheless, heterogeneous navigation patterns and dynamic fluctuating Web traffic complicate the improvement process. Alternatively, improvement can be made by giving direct guidance to the surfers in navigating the Web sites. In this paper, information retrieval on a Web site is modeled as a Markov chain associated with the corresponding dynamic Web traffic and designated information pages. We consider four models of information retrieval based on combination of the level of skill or experience of the surfers as well as the degree of navigation support by the sites. Simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the different types of navigation guidance. In addition, we evaluate the four models of information retrieval in terms of complexity and applicability. The paper concludes with a research summary and a direction for future research efforts. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Degree of Scaffolding: Learning Objective Metadata: A Prototype Leaning System Design for Integrating GIS into a Civil Engineering Curriculum

Digital media and networking offer great potential as tools for enhancing classroom learning environments, both local and distant. One concept and related technological tool that can facilitate the effective application and distribution of digital educational resources is learning objects in combination with the SCORM (sharable content objects reference model) compliance framework. Progressive scaffolding is a learning design approach for educational systems that provides flexible guidance to students. We are in the process of utilizing this approach within a SCORM framework in the form of a multi-level instructional design. The associated metadata required by SCORM will describe the degree of scaffolding. This paper will discuss progressive scaffolding as it relates to SCORM compliant learning objects, within the context of the design of an application for integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into the civil engineering curriculum at the University of Missouri - Rolla

Web Data Retrieval, Management, and Analysis

現今全球資訊網是受歡迎的一種交互式訊息傳播的媒介。網際網路已經變成了龐大的且具為無架構的資料容器。Peer-to-peer系統也已經變成廣泛的檔案分享平台。在本篇論文，我們探討了三項技術：為了全球資訊網資料探勘中個別使用者存取模式的擷取、使用者點選行為與使用者興趣對全球資訊網結構探勘的影響和P2P系統的搜尋策略。 為了擷取個別使用者存取模式，我們設計且實做了存取模式蒐集伺服器去實施全球資訊網資料探勘。經由頁面轉換的概念，我們設計的方法將實際上的解決代理伺服器所造成的使用者行為蒐集上的困難。在結果上證實了使用我們設計的方法所產生的traversal patterns比原本網頁伺服器所產生的Patterns不僅包含了更多的資訊而且也更加精準。 此外，為了探討在網頁結構探勘中在閱讀網頁使用者上的貢獻，使用者閱讀行為的影響已經被討論在VIPAS系統上。我們設計一個稱為AC-VIPAS的新演算法，此演算法將根據相似興趣的使用者的推薦來微調網頁次序。我們建立了評估以內文基礎的使用者叢集效能的實驗。實驗結果呈現出我們提出的以內文基礎的使用者叢集演算法的正確率是好過傳統的計數基礎的使用者叢集演算法。 最後，為了改善P2P系統上的搜尋效率，我們提出一個叢集式的P2P系統，稱為PeerCluster。在PeerCluster中，所有加入的電腦都被分到一個興趣叢集，而在興趣叢集中所有的電腦都是具有同一主題的興趣。為了能夠在興趣叢集間快速路由及廣播，我們使用了hypercube網路拓普來實作我們的系統。而且，我們也增強PeerCluster具有系統自動修復機制以對抗不可預期的電腦故障與網路中斷。The World Wilde Web is a popular and interactive medium to disseminate information today. The Web has become a huge and mostly unstructured data repository. Peer-to-Peer system also has become a popular file sharing platform in recent years. In this dissertation, we consider three issues: capturing individual user's access patterns for Web data mining, the influence of user's clicking behavior and user's interest for Web structure mining, and the searching policy for P2P system. For capturing individual user's access pattern, we design and implement an access pattern collection server to conduct data mining in the Web. By using the concept of page conversion, the proposed method is able to resolve the difficulty imposed by proxy servers and capture the Web user behavior effectively. Using the devised mechanism, traversal patterns are generated and compared to those produced by the ordinary Web servers to validate our results. In addition, for considering the page readers' contribution in Web structure mining, the influence of user's interest in VIPAS system is discussed. We devise a new algorithm, called Adjustable Cluster based VIPAS (AC-VIPAS), to adjust Web pages' scores according to the recommendation of users with similar interest. The experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the content based user cluster. Finally, for improving the searching performance in Peer-to-Peer system, we propose a cluster-based peer-to-peer system, called PeerCluster. In PeerCluster, all participant computers are grouped into various interest clusters, each of which contains computers that have the same interests. To efficiently route and broadcast messages across/within interest clusters, a hypercube topology is employed. Moreover, we augment PeerCluster with a system recovery mechanism to make it robust against unpredictable computer/network failures.1 Introduction 5 1.1 Motivation and Overview of the Dissertation 5 1.2 Organization of theDissertation 11 2 Capturing User Access Patterns in the Web for Data Mining 13 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 Access Pattern Collection Server 15 2.2.1 Enciphering Module 16 2.3 Employing the APCS Logs for Traversal Pattern Derivation 17 2.3.1 Mining on Logs fromOrdinaryWeb Servers 17 2.3.2 Mining on Logs from APCS 20 2.3.3 Remark 22 2.4 Summary 24 3 AC-VIPAS: Adjustable Cluster Based Virtual Link Powered Authority Search 25 3.1 Introduction 25 3.2 Preliminary 28 3.2.1 The Notion of Virtual Links 29 3.2.2 VIPAS Algorithm 30 3.3 AC-VIPAS: Adjustable Cluster Based VIPAS Algorithm 31 3.3.1 Content Based User Cluster 33 3.3.2 Adjustment of Web pages’ scores 36 3.3.3 Discussion 37 3.4 Experimental Analysis 38 3.5 Summary 40 4 PeerCluster: A Cluster-Based Peer-to-Peer System 41 4.1 Introduction 41 4.2 Preliminaries 45 4.3 Cluster-based Peer-to-Peer System 47 4.3.1 Design of PeerCluster 47 4.3.2 Description of Protocols 51 4.3.3 Scalability 53 4.4 Performance Analysis 56 4.4.1 Simulation Model 56 4.4.2 Experimental Results 57 4.5 Summary 61 5 Conclusions 6