Semiotic Analysis of Computer Visualization

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the semiotic approach to form theory of computer visualization. Such theory should be the foundation of design, development, and evaluations of visualization systems. The “direct” semiotic analysis of visualization is defined and the scheme of the analysis is considered. This analysis reveals “who is who” in the process of the visualization semiosis and helps in design and development of the real visualization systems. The analysis allows to describe the problems arising at developments of specialized systems in terms of the semiotics and showing how this analysis can serve as a tool for the visualization systems design. It is important to analyze the sign nature of the human‐computer interface and the visualization. Such conceptions as computer metaphor, metaphor action, and metaphor formula are defined. The properties of metaphors are analyzed with a view to possible usage of metaphors for specific applications. The properties are considered by the example of the hierarchical sequence of the natural Room‐Building‐City (Landscape) metaphors. Also the properties of the molecule metaphor are considered in the context of software visualization systems. In conclusion, some approaches to the theory of computer visualization are outlined

The Case for Dynamic Models of Learners' Ontologies in Physics

In a series of well-known papers, Chi and Slotta (Chi, 1992; Chi & Slotta, 1993; Chi, Slotta & de Leeuw, 1994; Slotta, Chi & Joram, 1995; Chi, 2005; Slotta & Chi, 2006) have contended that a reason for students' difficulties in learning physics is that they think about concepts as things rather than as processes, and that there is a significant barrier between these two ontological categories. We contest this view, arguing that expert and novice reasoning often and productively traverses ontological categories. We cite examples from everyday, classroom, and professional contexts to illustrate this. We agree with Chi and Slotta that instruction should attend to learners' ontologies; but we find these ontologies are better understood as dynamic and context-dependent, rather than as static constraints. To promote one ontological description in physics instruction, as suggested by Slotta and Chi, could undermine novices' access to productive cognitive resources they bring to their studies and inhibit their transition to the dynamic ontological flexibility required of experts.Comment: The Journal of the Learning Sciences (In Press

Economics for the Masses : The Visual Display of Economic Knoledge in the United Staes (1921-1945)

The rise of visual representation in economics textbooks after WWII is one of the main features of contemporary economics. In this paper, we argue that this development has been preceded by a no less significant rise of visual representation in the larger literature devoted to social and scientific issues, including economic textbooks for non-economists as well as newspapers and magazines. During the interwar era, editors, propagandists and social scientists altogether encouraged the use of visual language as the main vehicle to spread information and opinions about the economy to a larger audience. These new ways of visualizing social facts, which most notably helped shape the understanding of economic issues by various audiences during the years of the Great Depression, were also conceived by their inventors as alternative ways of practicing economics: in opposition to the abstraction of “neoclassical” economics, these authors wanted to use visual representation as a way to emphasize the human character of the discipline and did not accept the strict distinction between the creation and the diffusion of economic knowledge. We explore different yet related aspects of these developments by studying the use of visual language in economics textbooks intended for non-specialists, in periodicals such as the Survey, a monthly magazine intended for an audience of social workers, the Americanization of Otto Neurath's pictorial statistics and finally the use of those visual representations by various state departments and administrations under Roosevelt's legislature (including the much-commented Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration). We show how visualizations that have been created in opposition to neoclassical economics have lost most of their theoretical content when used widely for policy purposes while being simultaneously integrated into the larger American culture. It is our claim that those issues, which are familiar to those involved in cultural and visual studies, are also of crucial importance to apprehend the later developments of modern economics.Visualization, economocs, American Economy, Otto Neurath, Rexford Tugwell, Roosevelt, Roy Stryker, Photographs, Pictorial Statistics