Data Exploration, Analysis, and Representation: Integration through Visual Analytics

Abstract

Visual analytics is a fast growing discipline that combines graphics, visualization,interaction, and data analysis in solving large and complex problems that require human understanding and analysis. Although each of these subfields has made significant advancements individually, methods in visual analytics that combine them have demonstrated great benefits as well as revealing great challenges. In addressing these challenges, I have taken a collaborative multi-disciplinary approach that focuses on developing interactive visual methods for solving domain-specific problems. In this talk, I will discuss methods for overcoming these challenges from the perspective of a graphics and visualization researcher. In particular, I will use urban modeling and rendering as an example to demonstrate how a traditional graphics problem can be transformed through interactive methods to incorporate semantic information about an urban environment. Using similar principles, I will present projects relating to real-world problems in financial and biomechanical analysis and show how data analysis can be combined with interaction and visual representation. Finally, I will highlight the importance of understanding a user?s interaction in the context of reasoning and intent retrieval, and conclude with a presentation of on-going collaborations in areas relating to mixed- initiative systems and dimension reduction.