Mapper is an algorithm that summarizes the topological information contained
in a dataset and provides an insightful visualization. It takes as input a
point cloud which is possibly high-dimensional, a filter function on it and an
open cover on the range of the function. It returns the nerve simplicial
complex of the pullback of the cover. Mapper can be considered a discrete
approximation of the topological construct called Reeb space, as analysed in
the 1-dimensional case by [Carriere et al.,2018]. Despite its success in
obtaining insights in various fields such as in [Kamruzzaman et al., 2016],
Mapper is an ad hoc technique requiring lots of parameter tuning. There is also
no measure to quantify goodness of the resulting visualization, which often
deviates from the Reeb space in practice. In this paper, we introduce a new
cover selection scheme for data that reduces the obscuration of topological
information at both the computation and visualisation steps. To achieve this,
we replace global scale selection of cover with a scale selection scheme
sensitive to local density of data points. We also propose a method to detect
some deviations in Mapper from Reeb space via computation of persistence
features on the Mapper graph.Comment: Accepted at ICDM