Visualization of Information
Visualization is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the action or fact of visualizing, the power or process of forming a mental picture or vision of something not actually present to the sight." As the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" goes, visualization can be defined as a method that makes the best use of a person's perceptual abilities to observe, access, and understand data and information. Generally speaking, the purpose of visualization is to provide the user with not only a visual presentation and interpretation of the data and information but also a better understanding of the phenomenon behind the data and information. A more recent and domain-specific definition of visualization is given by the following: "Visualization provides an interface between two powerful information processing systems—human mind and the modern computer. Visualization is the process of transforming data, information, and knowledge into visual form making use of human's natural visual capabilities. With effective visual interfaces we can interact with large volumes of data rapidly and effectively to discover hidden characteristics, patterns, and trends" (Gershon, Eick, and Card, 1998, p. 9).
There are many ways to approach the concept of visualization. Edward Tufte (1990) categorizes visualization into three types: pictures of numbers (e.g., statistic graphs), pictures of nouns (e.g., maps and aerial photographs), and pictures of verbs (e.g., representations of motion, process, cause and effect).
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