VAST contest dataset use in education

The IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Symposium has held a contest each year since its inception in 2006. These events are designed to provide visual analytics researchers and developers with analytic challenges similar to those encountered by professional information analysts. The VAST contest has had an extended life outside of the symposium, however, as materials are being used in universities and other educational settings, either to help teachers of visual analytics-related classes or for student projects. We describe how we develop VAST contest datasets that results in products that can be used in different settings and review some specific examples of the adoption of the VAST contest materials in the classroom. The examples are drawn from graduate and undergraduate courses at Virginia Tech and from the Visual Analytics “Summer Camp ” run by the National Visualization and Analytics Center in 2008. We finish with a brief discussion on evaluation metrics for education

Interactive visualization systems and data integration methods for supporting discovery in collections of scientific information

Technological developments have been enabling additional sharing and reuse of scientific information. Current indexing methods support query-based search and filtering, however they do not support overviews and exploration. Due to these limitations of existing indexing methods, it is challenging to discover records and connections that relate information in new and potentially insightful ways. We developed prototype systems and computational methods for integrating collections from multiple sources within a domain into a single, unified graph data structure. Graph-theoretic measures and visualizations were then applied to identify relations and records that support discovery tasks. Three collections of molecular information were studied: (1) influenza protein sequences from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, (2) Open Notebook Science notebooks and databases from Drexel University and other academic chemical research laboratories, and (3) project data from drug discovery projects at Pfizer R&D. We designed methods for data integration within these collections. We then analyzed the integrated collections to design interactive visual tools and computational methods that could systematically identify relations and records that have a high potential to lead to novel discoveries in these areas. We conducted interviews with domain experts to evaluate the effectiveness of these designs. These studies demonstrate the feasibility of the new indexing methods to improve the discoverability of novel connections across multiple collections within a domain.Ph.D., Information Science -- Drexel University, 201

Jigsaw meets Blue Iguanodon - The VAST 2007 Contest

This article describes our use of the Jigsaw system in working on the VAST 2007 Contest. Jigsaw provides multiple views of a document collection and the individual entities within those documents, with a particular focus on exposing connections between entities. We describe how we refined the identified entities in order to better facilitate Jigsaw’s use and how the different views helped us to uncover key parts of the underlying plot

Cognitive Foundations for Visual Analytics

In this report, we provide an overview of scientific/technical literature on information visualization and VA. Topics discussed include an update and overview of the extensive literature search conducted for this study, the nature and purpose of the field, major research thrusts, and scientific foundations. We review methodologies for evaluating and measuring the impact of VA technologies as well as taxonomies that have been proposed for various purposes to support the VA community. A cognitive science perspective underlies each of these discussions

Paper Dinosaurs : field notes as finds in Robert Kroetsch's Badlands

[À l'origine dans / Was originally part of : Thèses et mémoires - FAS - Département d'études anglaises]Des dinosaures sur papier : des notes « sur le terrain » comme on en trouve dans le Badlands de Robert Kroetsch passe en revue cette œuvre postmoderne de 1975 portant sur une expédition paléontologique fictive près de la rivière Red Deer, en Alberta, conformément à la récente tendance à exiger la vérification systématique des données à la base des récits métafictifs historiographiques dans la littérature canadienne-anglaise. Inspirée de l’exploration canonique qu’a effectuée John Livingston-Lowes des plus grands poèmes de Samuel Taylor Coleridge par le biais de la mine d’or du Gutch Memorandum Book dans The Road to Xanadu, cette thèse entreprend un nouveau type de recherche qui se démarque des archives conventionnelles et de la tradition documentaire. S’appuyant sur des documents holographes non publiés provenant de dépôts d’archives situés au Québec, en Ontario et en Alberta et écrits par des collecteurs, des géologues et des paléontologues de la Commission géologique du Canada, ainsi que sur des notes « sur le terrain », des notes de recherche et des journaux personnels écrits par Robert Kroetsch pendant la rédaction de son roman Badlands, cet examen critique révèle les strates sous-jacentes inédites d’une œuvre de fiction particulière. Dans pratiquement toute fouille paléontologique, le retrait de ce qui enveloppe un spécimen révèle souvent des données supplémentaires qui peuvent, si elles sont soigneusement interprétées, offrir des indices essentiels sur les environnements paléontologiques. Ainsi, un squelette de dinosaure est rarement retiré d’une carrière stérile dans son intégralité. Il en va de même pour toute recherche sur un processus littéraire. Aucun texte ne s’autosuffit. Comme Kroetsch s’est efforcé de produire son récit sous forme d’interrogation sur la création et la transmission des données historiques, particulièrement grâce à des notes « sur le terrain », une vaste étude de ce « terrain » comprenant des intertextes de l’Antiquité, des sciences, de l’Histoire, de l’histoire populaire, de récits de voyages et de la littérature canadienne et internationale est ici menée. On y fait librement référence à des périodes et à des auteurs très diversifiés, allant de Thomas Jefferson et des tombelles à Bruce Chatwin et sa peau de « brontosaure ». Évidemment, aucune entreprise interdisciplinaire du genre ne peut être exhaustive. Ce projet se veut plutôt une vitrine littéraire réunissant des curiosités autour d’une œuvre principale, soit le Badlands de Robert Kroetsch. Réduites à leur plus simple expression, les notes « sur le terrain » constituent des messages destinés à la postérité. En explorant trois thèmes principaux, cette thèse explique comment ces messages pourraient être transmis. « Saxa Loquuntur ! », ainsi intitulé en référence à l’analogie de Freud avec l’archéologie, traite des métaphores associées aux témoignages de la pierre ; « Good Jones » porte sur les façons dont la taxinomie peut combler le désir d’un chercheur d’os de ne pas tomber dans l’oubli ; « Box 16 » suit une piste documentaire en parcourant les écrits de Kroetsch pour reconstituer tant l’élaboration d’un roman que les notions de temps, d’espace et d’origine d’une œuvre littéraire.Paper Dinosaurs: Field Notes as Finds in Robert Kroetsch's Badlands revisits the 1975 postmodern novel about a fictionalized palaeontological expedition down Alberta's Red Deer River in light of recent calls for systematic investigation into the source materials of historiographic meta-fictions in anglophone Canadian literature. Inspired by John Livingston-Lowes' canonical dissection of the major poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, via the treasure trove of the Gutch Memorandum Book in The Road to Xanadu, this study undertakes a new process focused inquiry into the archive and into the documentary tradition. By excavating unpublished holograph materials from Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta repositories written by Geological Survey of Canada collectors, geologists, and palaeontologists, in addition to field-notes, research notes and diaries produced by Robert Kroetsch during the writing of Badlands, this critical examination reveals hitherto unseen strata underlying a particular work of fiction. In most any palaeontological dig the removal of overburden from a target specimen often exposes surprising ancillary data, which through careful interpretation may give vital clues to palaeo-enviromments. A dinosaur skeleton is rarely pried whole from a sterile quarry. Neither is any inquiry into literary process. No text exists unto itself. Because Kroetsch so self-consciously crafted his narrative as an interrogation of history generation and transmission – specifically via the written word in the vehicle of field-notes – this study surveys a broad field encompassing inter-texts from antiquity, science, history, popular history, travel writing, Canadian and World literatures. Recourse is freely made to widely divergent authors and periods from Thomas Jefferson and the barrow mounds to Bruce Chatwin and his "brontosaurus" skin. Of course no such inter-disciplinary enterprise can be exhaustive. Rather this project assembles a kind of literary cabinet of curiosities grouped around the principal specimen of Robert Kroetsch's Badlands. In their most reductive configuration, field notes are messages to posterity. Through three main themes this study explores how these messages may be conveyed: "Saxa Loquuntur!", so titled after Freud's archaeological analogy, investigates metaphors of stone speaking; "Good Jones" interrogates how taxonomy can be made to serve a bone collector's desire to be remembered; and finally "Box 16" follows a documentary trail into Kroetsch's papers to trace not only the construction of a novel but also notions of time and place, and authorship

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 9: All Formats—Combined Alphabetical Listing

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. This volume contains all listings in all formats, arranged alphabetically by author or main entry. In other words, it combines the listings from Volume 1 (Monograph and Serial Titles), Volume 3 (Periodical Articles), and Volume 7 (Audio/Visual Materials) into a comprehensive bibliography. (There may be additional materials included in this list, e.g. duplicate items and items not yet fully edited.) As in the other volumes, coverage of this material begins around 1994, the final year covered by De Waal's bibliography, but may not yet be totally up-to-date (given the ongoing nature of this bibliography). It is hoped that other titles will be added at a later date. At present, this bibliography includes 12,594 items

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 5: Periodical Articles--Secondary References, Alphabetical Listing

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 5 includes "passing" or "secondary" references, i.e. those entries that are passing in nature or contain very brief information or content

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 6: Periodical Articles, Subject Listing, By De Waal Category

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 6 presents the periodical literature arranged by subject categories (as originally devised for the De Waal bibliography and slightly modified here)