19.07.2010

Montag, 19. Juli 2010, 17:00 Uhr, Turing-Hörsaal

Prof. Dr. Stephen Kobourov (University of Arizona, USA)

Putting Data on the Map

Information visualization can be invaluable in making sense out of large data sets. However, traditional graph visualization methods often fail to capture the underlying structural information, clustering, and neighborhoods. Our algorithm for visualizing graphs as maps provides a way to overcome some of the shortcomings with the help of the geographic map metaphor. While graphs, charts, and tables often require considerable effort to comprehend, a map representation is more intuitive, as most people are very familiar with maps and even enjoy carefully examining maps. The effectiveness of the algorithm is illustrated with examples from several domains, namely TV shows, Amazon books, and last.fm music.