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Contextual visualization
Borland D., Wang W., Gotz D. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications38 (6):17-23,2018.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Nov 22 2019

If users cannot see the breakdown of data hidden behind summaries visualized as charts or pies, they will go to another website to find the information. Unseen information can lead to biased findings presented by summaries. The complexity of data analysis and tasks makes it more difficult to obtain acceptable data validity. This paper discusses five sources of unseen threats to visualization validity and how each can be mitigated.

The first threat is that details hide behind summaries. To mitigate this threat, a user would need to see the details by clicking, for example, a chart bar that says 9.4 percent of Americans have diabetes. A user could see that a very high percentage of diabetics have type 2 (adult onset) while the rest have type 1 (insulin dependent).

The second threat is that summaries reduce the view of the data. This limitation can be overcome with data visualization. The stock market, for example, could provide a visual presentation of short-term spans of price changes.

The third threat is the negative effects of data omission. This can be countered by “capturing a user’s exploration history and visualizing differences in variable distributions.”

The fourth threat is unobserved external data that the user cannot see. One possible solution is to observe how census data is used in an online activity to better understand the general population.

The fifth threat is cognitive bias as a result of information not captured in a visualization. This could be overcome with models to better understand how biases can occur and be avoided.

The authors keep the presentation informal with a pictorial example focusing on a small part of a map and a screen copy of “a visual analytics system ... to detect selection bias during exploratory data selection.” Those interested in the challenges of improving contextual visualization should read this paper.

Reviewer:  J. Myerson Review #: CR146795 (2001-0009)
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