Visual Analytics

Visual analytics is the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. [Thomas and Cook, 2006]

People use visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information and derive insight from massive, dynamic, ambiguous, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessment effectively for action.

Visual analytics is a multidisciplinary field that includes the following focus areas:

• analytical reasoning techniques that let users obtain deep insights that directly support assessment, planning, and decision making;
• visual representations and interaction techniques that exploit the human eye’s broad bandwidth pathway into the mind to let users see, explore, and understand large amounts of information simultaneously;
• data representations and transformations that convert all types of conflicting and dynamic data in ways that support visualization and analysis; and
• techniques to support production, presentation, and dissemination of analytical results to communicate information in the appropriate context to a variety of audiences.

[Thomas and Cook, 2005, 2006]

References

• [Thomas and Cook, 2005] J.J. Thomas and K.A. Cook, eds., Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics, IEEE CS Press, 2005.
• [Thomas and Cook, 2006] James J. Thomas and Kristin A. Cook., IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 26(1):10-13, January/February, 2006.