Stacked Graphs – Geometry & Aesthetics

Abstract

In February 2008, the New York Times published an unusual chart of box office revenues for 7500 movies over 21 years. The chart was based on a similar visualization, developed by the first author, that displayed trends in music listening. This paper describes the design decisions and algorithms behind these graphics, and discusses the reaction on the Web. We suggest that this type of complex layered graph is effective for displaying large data sets to a mass audience. We provide a mathematical analysis of how this layered graph relates to traditional stacked graphs and to techniques such as ThemeRiver, showing how each method is optimizing a different "energy function". Finally, we discuss techniques for coloring and ordering the layers of such graphs. Throughout the paper, we emphasize the interplay between considerations of aesthetics and legibility.

Personalized Recommendation in Interactive Visual Analysis of Stacked Graphs

“…Havre et al [16] used the stacked graph to depict thematic variations over time within a large collection of documents. There is also work aiming at improving the aesthetics of the stacked graph [17,18]. In our work, we adapt a recommender engine to the stacked graph visualization.…”

The Impact of Secondary Notation on Process Model Understanding

“…The priority of these rules may even be adjusted while a model is created. Prior research has shown that the comprehension of graphical layout of a model depends upon a number of parameters [10,28,30,31]. Some of these parameters have been identified as having a strong influence with respect to the understanding of a model [28,30].…”

Ranking optimization approach enhancement of line-up algorithm

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