Visualization of Publication Impact

Measuring scholarly impact has been a topic of much interest in recent years. While many use the citation count as a primary indicator of a publications impact, the quality and impact of those citations will vary. Additionally, it is often difficult to see where a paper sits among other papers in the same research area. Questions we wished to answer through this visualization were: is a publication cited less than publications in the field?; is a publication cited by high or low impact publications?; and can we visually compare the impact of publications across a result set? In this work we address the above questions through a new visualization of publication impact. Our technique has been applied to the visualization of citation information in INSPIREHEP (http://www.inspirehep.net), the largest high energy physics publication repository

The State of the Art in Cartograms

Cartograms combine statistical and geographical information in thematic maps, where areas of geographical regions (e.g., countries, states) are scaled in proportion to some statistic (e.g., population, income). Cartograms make it possible to gain insight into patterns and trends in the world around us and have been very popular visualizations for geo-referenced data for over a century. This work surveys cartogram research in visualization, cartography and geometry, covering a broad spectrum of different cartogram types: from the traditional rectangular and table cartograms, to Dorling and diffusion cartograms. A particular focus is the study of the major cartogram dimensions: statistical accuracy, geographical accuracy, and topological accuracy. We review the history of cartograms, describe the algorithms for generating them, and consider task taxonomies. We also review quantitative and qualitative evaluations, and we use these to arrive at design guidelines and research challenges

ESID: A Visual Analytics Tool to Epidemiological Emergencies

Visual analysis tools can help illustrate the spread of infectious diseases and enable informed decisions on epidemiology and public health issues. To create visualisation tools that are intuitive, easy to use, and effective in communicating information, continued research and development focusing on user-centric and methodological design models is extremely important. As a contribution to this topic, this paper presents the design and development of the visual analytics application ESID (Epidemiological Scenarios for Infectious Diseases). The goal of ESID is to provide a platform for rapid assessment of the most effective interventions for infectious disease control. ESID provides spatial-temporal analysis, forecasting, comparison of simulations, interactive filters, and accessibility options. In its current form, it shows the simulations of a hybrid graph-equation-based model as introduced in for infection control. The model can be stratified for different age groups and takes into account the properties of the infectious disease as well as human mobility and contact behaviour.Comment: 6 pages, 5 images and 1 table, Eurovis workshop on visual analytics (EuroVA) 202

Cell lineage visualisation

Cell lineages describe the developmental history of cell populations and are produced by combining time-lapse imaging and image processing. Biomedical researchers study cell lineages to understand fundamental processes, such as cell differentiation and the pharmacodynamic action of anticancer agents. Yet, the interpretation of cell lineages is hindered by their complexity and insufficient capacity for visual analysis. We present a novel approach for interactive visualisation of cell lineages. Based on an understanding of cellular biology and live-cell imaging methodology, we identify three requirements: multimodality (cell lineages combine spatial, temporal, and other properties), symmetry (related to lineage branching structure), and synchrony (related to temporal alignment of cellular events). We address these by combining visual summaries of the spatiotemporal behaviour of an arbitrary number of lineages, including variation from average behaviour, with node-link representations that emphasise the presence or absence of symmetry and synchrony. We illustrate the merit of our approach by presenting a real-world case study where the cytotoxic action of the anticancer drug topotecan was determined

The Effect of Information Visualization Delivery on Narrative Construction and Development

We conducted a between-subject experiment with 32 participants to explore how two different models of information visualization delivery influence narratives constructed by audiences. The first model involves direct narrative by a speaker using visualization software to tell a data story, while the second model involves constructing a story by interactively exploring the visualization software. We used an open-ended questionnaire in a controlled laboratory settings in which the primary goal was to collect a number of written data stories derived from the two models. The participants’ data stories and answers were all analysed and coded using a number of themes, including insight types, and narrative structures. Our findings show that while the delivery model does not significantly affect how easy or difficult the participants found telling a data story to be, it does have an effect on the tendency to identify and use outliers insights in the data story if they are not distracted from this by direct narration, and on the narrative structure and depth of the data story. Our approach to data analysis and different storytelling axes can be usefully applied to other studies and comparisons of storytelling approaches

Visual cues in estimation of part-to-whole comparison

Pie charts were first published in 1801 by William Playfair and have caused some controversy since. Despite the suggestions of many experts against their use, several empirical studies have shown that pie charts are at least as good as alternatives. From Brinton to Few on one side and Eells to Kosara on the other, there appears to have been a hundred-year war waged on the humble pie. In this paper a set of experiments are reported that compare the performance of pie charts and horizontal bar charts with various visual cues. Amazon's Mechanical Turk service was employed to perform the tasks of estimating segments in various part-to-whole charts. The results lead to recommendations for data visualization professionals in developing dashboards.Comment: Camera-ready version of final accepted paper for IEEE VIS 2019 Short Papers trac