11,321 research outputs found
Evaluating the Comprehension of Euler Diagrams
We describe an empirical investigation into layout criteria that can help with the comprehension of Euler diagrams. Euler diagrams are used to represent set inclusion in applications such as teaching set theory, database querying, software engineering, filing system organisation and bio-informatics. Research in automatically laying out Euler diagrams for use with these applications is at an early stage, and our work attempts to aid this research by informing layout designers about the importance of various Euler diagram aesthetic criteria. The three criteria under investigation were: contour jaggedness, zone area inequality and edge closeness. Subjects were asked to interpret diagrams with different combinations of levels for each of the criteria. Results for this investigation indicate that, within the parameters of the study, all three criteria are important for understanding Euler diagrams and we have a preliminary indication of the ordering of their importance
A parent-centered radial layout algorithm for interactive graph visualization and animation
We have developed (1) a graph visualization system that allows users to
explore graphs by viewing them as a succession of spanning trees selected
interactively, (2) a radial graph layout algorithm, and (3) an animation
algorithm that generates meaningful visualizations and smooth transitions
between graphs while minimizing edge crossings during transitions and in static
layouts.
Our system is similar to the radial layout system of Yee et al. (2001), but
differs primarily in that each node is positioned on a coordinate system
centered on its own parent rather than on a single coordinate system for all
nodes. Our system is thus easy to define recursively and lends itself to
parallelization. It also guarantees that layouts have many nice properties,
such as: it guarantees certain edges never cross during an animation.
We compared the layouts and transitions produced by our algorithms to those
produced by Yee et al. Results from several experiments indicate that our
system produces fewer edge crossings during transitions between graph drawings,
and that the transitions more often involve changes in local scaling rather
than structure.
These findings suggest the system has promise as an interactive graph
exploration tool in a variety of settings
Maximizing the Total Resolution of Graphs
A major factor affecting the readability of a graph drawing is its
resolution. In the graph drawing literature, the resolution of a drawing is
either measured based on the angles formed by consecutive edges incident to a
common node (angular resolution) or by the angles formed at edge crossings
(crossing resolution). In this paper, we evaluate both by introducing the
notion of "total resolution", that is, the minimum of the angular and crossing
resolution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time where the
problem of maximizing the total resolution of a drawing is studied.
The main contribution of the paper consists of drawings of asymptotically
optimal total resolution for complete graphs (circular drawings) and for
complete bipartite graphs (2-layered drawings). In addition, we present and
experimentally evaluate a force-directed based algorithm that constructs
drawings of large total resolution
Notes on large angle crossing graphs
A graph G is an a-angle crossing (aAC) graph if every pair of crossing edges
in G intersect at an angle of at least a. The concept of right angle crossing
(RAC) graphs (a=Pi/2) was recently introduced by Didimo et. al. It was shown
that any RAC graph with n vertices has at most 4n-10 edges and that there are
infinitely many values of n for which there exists a RAC graph with n vertices
and 4n-10 edges. In this paper, we give upper and lower bounds for the number
of edges in aAC graphs for all 0 < a < Pi/2
Exploring the relative importance of crossing number and crossing angle
Recent research has indicated that human graph reading performance can be affected by the size of crossing angle. Crossing angle is closely related to another aesthetic criterion: number of edge crossings. Although crossing number has been previously identified as the most important aesthetic, its relative impact on performance of human graph reading is unknown, compared to crossing angle. In this paper, we present an exploratory user study investigating the relative importance between crossing number and crossing angle. This study also aims to further examine the effects of crossing number and crossing angle not only on task performance measured as response time and accuracy, but also on cognitive load and visualization efficiency. The experimental results reinforce the previous findings of the effects of the two aesthetics on graph comprehension. The study demonstrates that on average these two closely related aesthetics together explain 33% of variance in the four usability measures: time, accuracy, mental effort and visualization efficiency, with about 38% of the explained variance being attributed to the crossing angle. Copyright © 2010 ACM
Cultural evolution in Vietnam’s early 20th century: a Bayesian networks analysis of Franco-Chinese house designs
The study of cultural evolution has taken on an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse approach in explicating phenomena of cultural transmission and adoptions. Inspired by this computational movement, this study uses Bayesian networks analysis, combining both the frequentist and the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, to investigate the highly representative elements in the cultural evolution of a Vietnamese city’s architecture in the early 20th century. With a focus on the façade design of 68 old houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (based on 78 data lines extracted from 248 photos), the study argues that it is plausible to look at the aesthetics, architecture, and designs of the house façade to find traces of cultural evolution in Vietnam, which went through more than six decades of French colonization and centuries of sociocultural influence from China. The in-depth technical analysis, though refuting the presumed model on the probabilistic dependency among the variables, yields several results, the most notable of which is the strong influence of Buddhism over the decorations of the house façade. Particularly, in the top 5 networks with the best Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) scores and p\u3c0.05, the variable for decorations (DC) always has a direct probabilistic dependency on the variable B for Buddhism. The paper then checks the robustness of these models using Hamiltonian MCMC method and find the posterior distributions of the models’ coefficients all satisfy the technical requirement. Finally, this study suggests integrating Bayesian statistics in the social sciences in general and for the study of cultural evolution and architectural transformation in particular
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