Visualizing a Sequence of a Thousand Graphs (or Even More)

The visualization of dynamic graphs demands visually encoding at least three major data dimensions: vertices, edges, and time steps. Many of the state‐of‐the‐art techniques can show an overview of vertices and edges but lack a data‐scalable visual representation of the time aspect. In this paper, we address the problem of displaying dynamic graphs with a thousand or more time steps. Our proposed interleaved parallel edge splatting technique uses a time‐to‐space mapping and shows the complete dynamic graph in a static visualization. It provides an overview of all data dimensions, allowing for visually detecting time‐varying data patterns; hence, it serves as a starting point for further data exploration. By applying clustering and ordering techniques on the vertices, edge splatting on the links, and a dense time‐to‐space mapping, our approach becomes visually scalable in all three dynamic graph data dimensions. We illustrate the usefulness of our technique by applying it to call graphs and US domestic flight data with several hundred vertices, several thousand edges, and more than a thousand time steps.     

VA + Embeddings STAR: A State-of-the-Art Report on the Use of Embeddings in Visual Analytics

Over the past years, an increasing number of publications in information visualization, especially within the field of visual analytics, have mentioned the term “embedding” when describing the computational approach. Within this context, embeddings are usually (relatively) low-dimensional, distributed representations of various data types (such as texts or graphs), and since they have proven to be extremely useful for a variety of data analysis tasks across various disciplines and fields, they have become widely used. Existing visualization approaches aim to either support exploration and interpretation of the embedding space through visual representation and interaction, or aim to use embeddings as part of the computational pipeline for addressing downstream analytical tasks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey that takes a detailed look at embedding methods through the lens of visual analytics, and the purpose of our survey article is to provide a systematic overview of the state of the art within the emerging field of embedding visualization. We design a categorization scheme for our approach, analyze the current research frontier based on peer-reviewed publications, and discuss existing trends, challenges, and potential research directions for using embeddings in the context of visual analytics. Furthermore, we provide an interactive survey browser for the collected and categorized survey data, which currently includes 122 entries that appeared between 2007 and 2023.     

Interactive visual analysis of families of function graphs

The analysis and exploration of multidimensional and multivariate data is still one of the most challenging areas in the field of visualization. In this paper, we describe an approach to visual analysis of an especially challenging set of problems that exhibit a complex internal data structure. We describe the interactive visual exploration and analysis of data that includes several (usually large) families of function graphs f_i(x, t). We describe analysis procedures and practical aspects of the interactive visual analysis specific to this type of data (with emphasis on the function graph characteristic of the data). We adopted the well-proven approach of multiple, linked views with advanced interactive brushing to assess the data. Standard views such as histograms, scatterplots, and parallel coordinates are used to jointly visualize data. We support iterative visual analysis by providing means to create complex, composite brushes that span multiple views and that are constructed using different combination schemes. We demonstrate that engineering applications represent a challenging but very applicable area for visual analytics. As a case study, we describe the optimization of a fuel injection system in diesel engines of passenger cars     

Flip-Book Visualization of Dynamic Graphs

Dynamic graph visualization techniques can be based on animated or static diagrams showing the evolution over time. In this paper, we apply the concept of small multiples to visually illustrate the dynamics of a graph. Node-link, adjacency matrix, and adjacency list visualizations are used as basic visual metaphors for displaying individual graphs of the sequence. For node-link diagrams, we apply edge splatting to improve readability and reduce visual clutter caused by overlaps and link crossings. Additionally, to obtain a more scalable dynamic graph visualization in the time dimension, we integrate an interactive Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) feature to rapidly °ip between the sequences of displayed graphs, similar to the concept of flipping a book''s pages. Our visualization tool supports the focus-and-context design principle by providing an overview of a longer time sequence as small multiples in a grid while also showing a graph in focus as a large single representation in a zoomed in and more detailed view. The usefulness of the technique is illustrated in two case studies investigating a dynamic directed call graph and an evolving social network that consists of more than 1,000 undirected graphs.     

Scalable graph-based OLAP analytics over process execution data

In today’s knowledge-, service-, and cloud-based economy, businesses accumulate massive amounts of data from a variety of sources. In order to understand businesses one may need to perform considerable analytics over large hybrid collections of heterogeneous and partially unstructured data that is captured related to the process execution. This data, usually modeled as graphs, increasingly come to show all the typical properties of big data: wide physical distribution, diversity of formats, non-standard data models, independently-managed and heterogeneous semantics. We use the term big process graph to refer to such large hybrid collections of heterogeneous and partially unstructured process related execution data. Online analytical processing (OLAP) of big process graph is challenging as the extension of existing OLAP techniques to analysis of graphs is not straightforward. Moreover, process data analysis methods should be capable of processing and querying large amount of data effectively and efficiently, and therefore have to be able to scale well with the infrastructure’s scale. While traditional analytics solutions (relational DBs, data warehouses and OLAP), do a great job in collecting data and providing answers on known questions, key business insights remain hidden in the interactions among objects: it will be hard to discover concept hierarchies for entities based on both data objects and their interactions in process graphs. In this paper, we introduce a framework and a set of methods to support scalable graph-based OLAP analytics over process execution data. The goal is to facilitate the analytics over big process graph through summarizing the process graph and providing multiple views at different granularity. To achieve this goal, we present a model for process OLAP (P-OLAP) and define OLAP specific abstractions in process context such as process cubes, dimensions, and cells. We present a MapReduce-based graph processing engine, to support big data analytics over process graphs. We have implemented the P-OLAP framework and integrated it into our existing process data analytics platform, ProcessAtlas, which introduces a scalable architecture for querying, exploration and analysis of large process data. We report on experiments performed on both synthetic and real-world datasets that show the viability and efficiency of the approach.     

Visual analysis of multivariate state transition graphs

We present a new approach for the visual analysis of state transition graphs. We deal with multivariate graphs where a number of attributes are associated with every node. Our method provides an interactive attribute-based clustering facility. Clustering results in metric, hierarchical and relational data, represented in a single visualization. To visualize hierarchically structured quantitative data, we introduce a novel technique: the bar tree. We combine this with a node-link diagram to visualize the hierarchy and an arc diagram to visualize relational data. Our method enables the user to gain significant insight into large state transition graphs containing tens of thousands of nodes. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to a real-world use case. The graph we consider models the behavior of an industrial wafer stepper and contains 55 043 nodes and 289 443 edges     

ChronoCorrelator: Enriching Events with Time Series

Event sequences and time series are widely recorded in many application domains; examples are stock market prices, electronic health records, server operation and performance logs. Common goals for recording are monitoring, root cause analysis and predictive analytics. Current analysis methods generally focus on the exploration of either event sequences or time series. However, deeper insights are gained by combining both. We present a visual analytics approach where users can explore both time series and event data simultaneously, combining visualization, automated methods and human interaction. We enable users to iteratively refine the visualization. Correlations between event sequences and time series can be found by means of an interactive algorithm, which also computes the presence of monotonic effects. We illustrate the effectiveness of our method by applying it to real world and synthetic data sets.     

Visual Analysis of Large Graphs: State‐of‐the‐Art and Future Research Challenges

The analysis of large graphs plays a prominent role in various fields of research and is relevant in many important application areas. Effective visual analysis of graphs requires appropriate visual presentations in combination with respective user interaction facilities and algorithmic graph analysis methods. How to design appropriate graph analysis systems depends on many factors, including the type of graph describing the data, the analytical task at hand and the applicability of graph analysis methods. The most recent surveys of graph visualization and navigation techniques cover techniques that had been introduced until 2000 or concentrate only on graph layouts published until 2002. Recently, new techniques have been developed covering a broader range of graph types, such as time‐varying graphs. Also, in accordance with ever growing amounts of graph‐structured data becoming available, the inclusion of algorithmic graph analysis and interaction techniques becomes increasingly important. In this State‐of‐the‐Art Report, we survey available techniques for the visual analysis of large graphs. Our review first considers graph visualization techniques according to the type of graphs supported. The visualization techniques form the basis for the presentation of interaction approaches suitable for visual graph exploration. As an important component of visual graph analysis, we discuss various graph algorithmic aspects useful for the different stages of the visual graph analysis process. We also present main open research challenges in this field.     

利用问题求解理论来研究交互式复杂信息的可视分析行为

面对大数据的挑战,力图将人的推理能力和计算系统的数据处理能力相结合的交 互式可视分析研究变得愈发重要。然而目前仍缺乏有效的认知理论来指导面向复杂信息的可视 分析系统的设计,诸如意义构建等现有的理论框架通常着眼于分析行为的外在特征,未能对此 类行为的内在认知机理进行深入研究。因此提出将问题求解作为一种理论框架来解释交互可视 分析行为的基本认知活动,并建议从非良构问题的角度来描述可视分析过程中用户所面临的主 要挑战,还从问题表征及问题求解策略等角度分析了可视分析系统对分析行为的影响。本研究 在理论上,将认知心理学领域的问题求解理论引入到交互可视分析行为的研究中,该方法对设 计面向复杂信息分析的其他类型交互系统也有启示作用;在实践层面上,从问题求解的支持角 度探索了可视分析系统的设计和评估问题。     

GlyphLink: An interactive visualization approach for semantic graphs

Graph analysis by data visualization involves achieving a series of topology-based tasks. When the graph data belongs to a data domain that contains multiple node and link types, as in the case of semantic graphs, topology-based tasks become more challenging. To reduce visual complexity in semantic graphs, we propose an approach which is based on applying relational operations such as selecting and joining nodes of different types. We use node aggregation to reflect the relational operations to the graph. We introduce glyphs for representing aggregated nodes. Using glyphs lets us encode connectivity information of multiple nodes with a single glyph. We also use visual parameters of the glyph to encode node attributes or type specific information. Rather than doing the operations in the data abstraction layer and presenting the user with the resulting visualization, we propose an interactive approach where the user can iteratively apply the relational operations directly on the visualization. We present the efficiency of our method by the results of a usability study that includes a case study on a subset of the International Movie Database. The results of the controlled experiment in our usability study indicate a statistically significant contribution in reducing the completion time of the evaluation tasks.     

TreePlus: interactive exploration of networks with enhanced tree layouts

Despite extensive research, it is still difficult to produce effective interactive layouts for large graphs. Dense layout and occlusion make food Webs, ontologies and social networks difficult to understand and interact with. We propose a new interactive visual analytics component called TreePlus that is based on a tree-style layout. TreePlus reveals the missing graph structure with visualization and interaction while maintaining good readability. To support exploration of the local structure of the graph and gathering of information from the extensive reading of labels, we use a guiding metaphor of "plant a seed and watch it grow." It allows users to start with a node and expand the graph as needed, which complements the classic overview techniques that can be effective at (but often limited to) revealing clusters. We describe our design goals, describe the interface and report on a controlled user study with 28 participants comparing TreePlus with a traditional graph interface for six tasks. In general, the advantage of TreePlus over the traditional interface increased as the density of the displayed data increased. Participants also reported higher levels of confidence in their answers with TreePlus and most of them preferred TreePlus     

Novel intuitionistic fuzzy soft multiple-attribute decision-making methods

An intuitionistic fuzzy soft set plays a significant role as a mathematical tool for mathematical modeling, system analysis and decision making. This mathematical tool gives more precision, flexibility and compatibility to the system when compared to systems that are designed using fuzzy graphs and fuzzy soft graphs. In this paper, we use intuitionistic fuzzy soft graphs and possibility intuitionistic fuzzy soft graphs for parameterized representation of a system involving some uncertainty. We present novel multiple-attribute decision-making methods based on an intuitionistic fuzzy soft graph and possibility intuitionistic fuzzy soft graph. We also present our methods as algorithms that are used in our applications.

     

A survey on dynamic graph processing on GPUs: concepts,terminologies and systems

Graphs that are used to model real-world entities with vertices and relationships among entities with edges, have proven to be a powerful tool for describing real-world problems in applications. In most real-world scenarios, entities and their relationships are subject to constant changes. Graphs that record such changes are called dynamic graphs. In recent years, the widespread application scenarios of dynamic graphs have stimulated extensive research on dynamic graph processing systems that continuously ingest graph updates and produce up-to-date graph analytics results. As the scale of dynamic graphs becomes larger, higher performance requirements are demanded to dynamic graph processing systems. With the massive parallel processing power and high memory bandwidth, GPUs become mainstream vehicles to accelerate dynamic graph processing tasks. GPU-based dynamic graph processing systems mainly address two challenges: maintaining the graph data when updates occur (i.e., graph updating) and producing analytics results in time (i.e., graph computing). In this paper, we survey GPU-based dynamic graph processing systems and review their methods on addressing both graph updating and graph computing. To comprehensively discuss existing dynamic graph processing systems on GPUs, we first introduce the terminologies of dynamic graph processing and then develop a taxonomy to describe the methods employed for graph updating and graph computing. In addition, we discuss the challenges and future research directions of dynamic graph processing on GPUs.     

Coherent time-varying graph drawing with multifocus+context interaction

We present a new approach for time-varying graph drawing that achieves both spatiotemporal coherence and multifocus+context visualization in a single framework. Our approach utilizes existing graph layout algorithms to produce the initial graph layout, and formulates the problem of generating coherent time-varying graph visualization with the focus+context capability as a specially tailored deformation optimization problem. We adopt the concept of the super graph to maintain spatiotemporal coherence and further balance the needs for aesthetic quality and dynamic stability when interacting with time-varying graphs through focus+context visualization. Our method is particularly useful for multifocus+context visualization of time-varying graphs where we can preserve the mental map by preventing nodes in the focus from undergoing abrupt changes in size and location in the time sequence. Experiments demonstrate that our method strikes a good balance between maintaining spatiotemporal coherence and accentuating visual foci, thus providing a more engaging viewing experience for the users.     

An Exploratory Technique for Coherent Visualization of Time‐varying Volume Data

The selection of an appropriate global transfer function is essential for visualizing time‐varying simulation data. This is especially challenging when the global data range is not known in advance, as is often the case in remote and in‐situ visualization settings. Since the data range may vary dramatically as the simulation progresses, volume rendering using local transfer functions may not be coherent for all time steps. We present an exploratory technique that enables coherent classification of time‐varying volume data. Unlike previous approaches, which require pre‐processing of all time steps, our approach lets the user explore the transfer function space without accessing the original 3D data. This is useful for interactive visualization, and absolutely essential for in‐situ visualization, where the entire simulation data range is not known in advance. Our approach generates a compact representation of each time step at rendering time in the form of ray attenuation functions, which are used for subsequent operations on the opacity and color mappings. The presented approach offers interactive exploration of time‐varying simulation data that alleviates the cost associated with reloading and caching large data sets.     

Ensemble-based clustering of large probabilistic graphs using neighborhood and distance metric learning

Graphs are commonly used to express the communication of various data. Faced with uncertain data, we have probabilistic graphs. As a fundamental problem of such graphs, clustering has many applications in analyzing uncertain data. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on ensemble clustering for large probabilistic graphs. To generate ensemble clusters, we develop a set of probable possible worlds of the initial probabilistic graph. Then, we present a probabilistic co-association matrix as a consensus function to integrate base clustering results. It relies on co-occurrences of node pairs based on the probability of the corresponding common cluster graphs. Also, we apply two improvements in the steps before and after of ensembles generation. In the before step, we append neighborhood information based on node features to the initial graph to achieve a more accurate estimation of the probability between the nodes. In the after step, we use supervised metric learning-based Mahalanobis distance to automatically learn a metric from ensemble clusters. It aims to gain crucial features of the base clustering results. We evaluate our work using five real-world datasets and three clustering evaluation metrics, namely the Dunn index, Davies–Bouldin index, and Silhouette coefficient. The results show the impressive performance of clustering large probabilistic graphs.

     

Parallel edge splatting for scalable dynamic graph visualization

We present a novel dynamic graph visualization technique based on node-link diagrams. The graphs are drawn side-byside from left to right as a sequence of narrow stripes that are placed perpendicular to the horizontal time line. The hierarchically organized vertices of the graphs are arranged on vertical, parallel lines that bound the stripes; directed edges connect these vertices from left to right. To address massive overplotting of edges in huge graphs, we employ a splatting approach that transforms the edges to a pixel-based scalar field. This field represents the edge densities in a scalable way and is depicted by non-linear color mapping. The visualization method is complemented by interaction techniques that support data exploration by aggregation, filtering, brushing, and selective data zooming. Furthermore, we formalize graph patterns so that they can be interactively highlighted on demand. A case study on software releases explores the evolution of call graphs extracted from the JUnit open source software project. In a second application, we demonstrate the scalability of our approach by applying it to a bibliography dataset containing more than 1.5 million paper titles from 60 years of research history producing a vast amount of relations between title words.     

Graph signatures for visual analytics

We present a visual analytics technique to explore graphs using the concept of a data signature. A data signature, in our context, is a multidimensional vector that captures the local topology information surrounding each graph node. Signature vectors extracted from a graph are projected onto a low-dimensional scatterplot through the use of scaling. The resultant scatterplot, which reflects the similarities of the vectors, allows analysts to examine the graph structures and their corresponding real-life interpretations through repeated use of brushing and linking between the two visualizations. The interpretation of the graph structures is based on the outcomes of multiple participatory analysis sessions with intelligence analysts conducted by the authors at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The paper first uses three public domain data sets with either well-known or obvious features to explain the rationale of our design and illustrate its results. More advanced examples are then used in a customized usability study to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach. The study results reveal not only the limitations and weaknesses of the traditional approach based solely on graph visualization, but also the advantages and strengths of our signature-guided approach presented in the paper