Abstract data

Abstract data refers to (heterogenous) data that has no inherent spatial structure; thus it does not allow for a straightforward mapping to any geometry, but relies upon means provided by information visualization for its visual representation.

Information visualization is visualization of abstract data. This is data that has no inherent mapping to space. Examples for abstract data are the results of a survey or a database of the staff of a company containing names, addresses, salary and other attributes.

[Voigt, 2002]

References

• [Daessler, 1995]: Rolf Daessler, Visualization of Abstract Information, 1995.
• [Voigt, 2002]: Robert Voigt, An Extended Scatterplot Matrix and Case Studies in Information Visualization, Master's thesis, Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, 2002, Classification and Definition of Terms