On Minimizing Crossings in Storyline Visualizations

In a storyline visualization, we visualize a collection of interacting characters (e.g., in a movie, play, etc.) by $x$-monotone curves that converge for each interaction, and diverge otherwise. Given a storyline with $n$ characters, we show tight lower and upper bounds on the number of crossings required in any storyline visualization for a restricted case. In particular, we show that if (1) each meeting consists of exactly two characters and (2) the meetings can be modeled as a tree, then we can always find a storyline visualization with $O(n\log n)$ crossings. Furthermore, we show that there exist storylines in this restricted case that require $\Omega(n\log n)$ crossings. Lastly, we show that, in the general case, minimizing the number of crossings in a storyline visualization is fixed-parameter tractable, when parameterized on the number of characters $k$. Our algorithm runs in time $O(k!^2k\log k + k!^2m)$, where $m$ is the number of meetings.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. To appear at the 23rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2015

Story of a 'Storyline Visualization' in High School Readings

Storyline visualization, as a process of illustrating data that has a course of events via a visual medium, has been used in the area of film making for a very long time. Not so long ago, it has moved from the paper version to the digital word allowing for a wider usage. In this paper we propose its usage as a teaching tool in the area of literature reading for the Croatian class (primary language). We have conducted a preliminary research in five Croatian high schools of a different profile to see how storyline visualization, and visualization of school materials in general, affects students understanding of the material being studied. Each school participated with two groups of students where one group was exposed to the storyline visualization of a novel Prokleta avlija by Ivo Andrić [N=103 in total] during the reading period, and the other one was reading without the visualization [N=93 in total]. We will present our results taking into account students’ gender and type of a school

Storyline visualization

Tema ovog završnog rada je storyline vizualizacija, tj. prikaz podataka koji imaju neki tijek događanja vizualnim medijem. U ovom radu se, osim teoretskog dijela, nalazi i analiza istraživanja provedenog u pet različitih srednjih škola, iz kojeg su dobiveni podaci o utjecaju storyline vizualizacije i vizualizacije školskog gradiva općenito na učenike. Svrha ovog istraživanja bila je primarno istražiti, hoće li učenici bolje shvatiti sadržaj romana u nastavnom programu pomoću vizualnog prikaza te ispitati koliko bi takav način pristupa obradi nastavnog gradiva olakšala tumačenje istog. Roman čiji je storyline prikaz izrađen jest roman Ive Andrića Prokleta Avlija, koji je ne samo obavezna lektira u srednjim školama, već i roman s popisa djela za maturu.The theme of this bachelor thesis is storyline visualization, ie. the ilustration of data that has a course of events via a visual medium. In this thesis, besides the theoretical part, there is an analysis of a research that was conducted in five different high schools, from which I have gotten results about how the storyline visualization and visualizaiton of school material affects students in general. The purpose of this research was primarily to find out whether the students will better understand the story of a novel from the school program with the help of a visual representation or not, but also to see really helps in the understanding of the material. The novel whose storyline I prepared is the novel from Ivo Andrić Prokleta avlija that is not only mandatory reading in Croatian high schools, but also a novel that is listed as mandatory for the matura exam

On minimizing crossings in storyline visualizations

In a storyline visualization, we visualize a collection of inter- acting characters (e.g., in a movie, play, etc.) by x-monotone curves that converge for each interaction, and diverge otherwise. Given a storyline with n characters, we show tight lower and upper bounds on the number of crossings required in any storyline visualization for a restricted case. In particular, we show that if (1) each meeting consists of exactly two characters and (2) the meetings can be modeled as a tree, then we can always find a storyline visualization with O(n log n) crossings. Fur- thermore, we show that there exist storylines in this restricted case that require Ω(n log n) crossings. Lastly, we show that, in the general case, minimizing the number of crossings in a storyline visualization is fixed- parameter tractable, when parameterized on the number of characters k. Our algorithm runs in time (Formula presented.), where m is the number of meetings