Shuang Wu REU-DIMACS, 2010 Mentor: James Abello

Project description Our research project Input: time data recorded from the ‘Name That Cluster’ web page. Output: statistic results of participants’ different behaviors under corresponding situations when using computing interfaces. Main challenges: a. formed the data for statistics analysis.

There are three different interfaces shown to users under each query: Textual ( ), Graphical ( ) and Hybrid ( ). Generally, the process consists of selecting, exploring, and finally rating and naming clusters. The interface gives detailed instruction about its usage.

Step 1: Choose a phrase as well as one of the interface buttons next to it. Step 2: Select a group of related phrases. Step 3: Inspect the contents of the selected group of related phrases. Step 4: Enter answers about the selected group, which includes, a. Group description b. Group relevance c. Description relevance

 One of the most interesting things in this study is that users are given the choice of three different interfaces: textual, graphical and hybrid.  Currently, most clustering are shown in a pure textual form. However results (or search engines) to enhance current interfaces with graphical representations.  Our main task is to get a statistical analysis based on the data we collected from the ‘Name That Cluster’ web page, to see whether participants exhibit different behaviors when using different interfaces.

1. Order the raw data for each query. Ex. Timing Information Note: T, G, H identify the three interfaces. The numbers identify the time for a user to evaluate either T, G or H.

Note: leftovers are the remained data from T, G or H after grouping in triples.

After having the three groups of users of the same size corresponding to an interface per every query. We will perform statistical analysis. To answer questions like:  Which interface is preferred by participants;  People’s variety of behaviors per query;  The max, min, and average number of queries evaluated per user; etc.

Need to have meaningful statistics. Leftovers Because the number of triple groups (TGH) depends on the minimum numbers of triples over all queries, we need to actually find this minimum number. In order to minimize the leftovers and support the most effective statistical analysis.

We expect to get statistic results from this project, in order to determine what would be the preferred interface.

Name That Cluster: Text vs. Graphics, J. Abello, B. Gaudin, C. Tominski, H. Schulz.

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