Guidelines For Pursuing and Revealing Data Abstractions

Many data abstraction types, such as networks or set relationships, remain unfamiliar to data workers beyond the visualization research community. We conduct a survey and series of interviews about how people describe their data, either directly or indirectly. We refer to the latter as latent data abstractions. We conduct a Grounded Theory analysis that (1) interprets the extent to which latent data abstractions exist, (2) reveals the far-reaching effects that the interventionist pursuit of such abstractions can have on data workers, (3) describes why and when data workers may resist such explorations, and (4) suggests how to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks through transparency about visualization research perspectives and agendas. We then use the themes and codes discovered in the Grounded Theory analysis to develop guidelines for data abstraction in visualization projects. To continue the discussion, we make our dataset open along with a visual interface for further exploration

Exploring performance data with boxfish

pre-printThe growth in size and complexity of scaling applications and the systems on which they run pose challenges in analyzing and improving their overall performance. With metrics coming from thousands or millions of processes, visualization techniques are necessary to make sense of the increasing amount of data. To aid the process of exploration and understanding, we announce the initial release of Boxfish, an extensible tool for manipulating and visualizing data pertaining to application behavior. Combining and visually presenting data and knowledge from multiple domains, such as the application's communication patterns and the hardware's network configuration and routing policies, can yield the insight necessary to discover the underlying causes of observed behavior. Boxfish allows users to query, filter and project data across these domains to create interactive, linked visualizations

Preserving Command Line Workflow for a Package Management System Using ASCII DAG Visualization

Package managers provide ease of access to applications by removing the time-consuming and sometimes completely prohibitive barrier of successfully building, installing, and maintaining the software for a system. A package dependency contains dependencies between all packages required to build and run the target software. Package management system developers, package maintainers, and users may consult the dependency graph when a simple listing is insufficient for their analyses. However, users working in a remote command line environment must disrupt their workflow to visualize dependency graphs in graphical programs, possibly needing to move files between devices or incur forwarding lag. Such is the case for users of Spack, an open source package management system originally developed to ease the complex builds required by supercomputing environments. To preserve the command line workflow of Spack, we develop an interactive ASCII visualization for its dependency graphs. Through interviews with Spack maintainers, we identify user goals and corresponding visual tasks for dependency graphs. We evaluate the use of our visualization through a command line-centered study, comparing it to the system's two existing approaches. We observe that despite the limitations of the ASCII representation, our visualization is preferred by participants when approached from a command line interface workflow.U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [DE-AC52-07NA27344, LLNL-JRNL-746358]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

How Targeted Are Federal Expenditures on Children? A Kids' Share Analysis of Expenditures by Income in 2009

Analyzes the distribution of government spending on children by family income; category, such as health, social services, and education; and program, such as Medicaid; and the extent to which it is targeted to low-income children. Considers implications

A Classification of Infographics

Classifications are useful for describing existing phenomena and guiding further investigation. Several classifications of diagrams have been proposed, typically based on analytical rather than empirical methodologies. A notable exception is the work of Lohse and his colleagues, published in Communications of the ACM in December 1994. The classification of diagrams that Lohse proposed was derived from bottom-up grouping data collected from sixteen participants and based on 60 diagrams. Mean values on ten Likert-scales were used to predict diagram class. We follow a similar methodology to Lohse, using real-world infographics (i.e. embellished data charts) as our stimuli. We propose a structural classification of infographics, and determine whether infographics class can be predicted from values on Likert scales

A New Concept for the Future EHEA

AbstractThe Bologna Follow Up Group (BFUG) is currently charged with discussing new priorities for the future of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and to this end has organized national consultations as well as discussions within the BFUG itself. In addition to defining new priorities, it appears essential to strengthen the awareness of the principles underlying higher education beyond national or even macro-regional borders. To go beyond lists of priorities and principles, however important and valid in themselves, it seems useful to elaborate a convincing holistic concept or way of visualizing the desired future of higher education and the EHEA's role in achieving it. Such a concept or vision can give direction to the continuing reform process and inspire countries and higher education institutions to work creatively together. To this end, the EHEA may need to transform itself from a loose intergovernmental framework to a more cohesive space where, supported by the necessary normative reforms, higher education institutions and their stakeholders can freely and effectively pursue their collaborative mission. The paper explores whether the goal of creating a 'European higher education community' by 2030 can help to give direction to this complex process and what that might entail

tuning tools and insights for modern competence based third cycle programs

The paper looks at the tools useful for the third cycle that have been created by the many Tuning projects carried out over the last 13 years. The Tuning Process has proceeded in parallel with the Bologna Process and consists of a number of University-driven projects, following a common methodology, to create positive and concrete ways of implementing the shift to competence-based learner-centered higher education programs and practices. At present nearly all continents and macro-regions (Europe, Latin America, United States, Canada, Australia, Central Asia, Russian Federation, China and more) have participated or are participating in Tuning. The Tuning methodology has been applied to third cycle studies, both overall and in many key subject areas. Here we give an overview of how the tools and understandings created can enhance third cycle programs in any disciplinary area, including the arts and music

Stakeholder engagement for sustainability : a mixed method study of corporate strategies and engagement outcomes

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the strategies the companies use to engage external stakeholders, as well as the processes and outcomes of engagement. The first essay proposes a framework for evaluating a firm's stakeholder engagement strategy, comprised of eight dimensions that vary on a spectrum from least to most advanced. This essay also proposes six kinds of engagement outcomes: three involving learning and relationship building, and three involving tangible changes. The essay concludes with preliminary findings about engagement outcomes at the two case companies. The second essay uses the first essay's strategy framework to develop and validate scales for measuring each strategy dimension, and test which of these vary together to comprise a higher-order strategy. This type of analysis has not yet been done in the research on stakeholder engagement, which instead relies on descriptive typologies comprised of elements that are assumed, but not proven, to cluster together. The analysis in this paper generated six first-order factors, five of which combined to form a Strategy factor. This was used to score companies in the oil and gas, electric power, and automotive industries. Together, the first and second essays represent a first step towards more precisely defining and measuring the level of sophistication of a firm's stakeholder engagement strategy. The third essay is a fine-grained social psychological analysis of how negotiation frames, interpersonal trust, and issue characteristics interacted in one long-term engagement between a power company and environmental non-governmental stakeholders. The question motivating the analysis is: What prevented the participants from realizing the possibility they envisioned for engagement? I argue that a combination of issue characteristics and relational ambivalence -- the simultaneous presence of interpersonal trust and distrust -- motivated the company to engage in "quasi-cooperation" with stakeholders. Quasi-cooperation is the simultaneous deployment of cooperative and competitive tactics. The discovery by stakeholders of the company's quasi-cooperation triggered a conflict spiral that led to the destruction of the parties' working relationships, ending their engagement. Theoretical implications and practical lessons drawn from this case expand our knowledge of how practitioners might approach long-term engagements differently in the future.by Katherine W. Isaacs.Ph.D