1. Visual Analytics Processes

2. Two Examples on 2016 Presidential Election

4. Or This
us/elections/how-trump-pushed-the-election-map- to-the-right.html

5. Are They Good Enough to Analyze What Was Going On?

6. Suppose You Are An Analyst in a Think Tank
Two questions are assigned to you?
Why Could Trump Win the Election?
What Could Be the Target of the Next Terrorist Attack?

7. Visual Analytics Not just about piling up graphs.
Should support analysis
What is analysis?
General approaches for analysis: top-down and bottom- up

8. Top-Down Approach Deductive
Have a hypothesis based on certain guidance, theory, experience, etc.
Know what types of information to search
Find and analyze information
Confirm the hypothesis
Or refine the hypothesis and start the process again

9. Example 1 Analysis of why Trump won the election Many possible reasons
One hypothesis: strong support from the rust belt
Research, news articles, interviews
Is this true?
How to analyze this issue?

10. We can start from here
us/elections/how-trump-pushed-the-election-map- to-the-right.html

11. Example 2
What could the next terrorist attack happen?
Hypothesis?

12. Botto-up Approach Inductive Have no hypothesis at all
Have sufficient data
Search through data, find patterns, and build a hypothesis

13. Example 1 Analysis of the Dutch/French election What would you do?
All kinds of data
voting data, campaign speeches, news articles, social media contents, etc.

14. Example 2
What could happen to Russia in next terrorist attack?

15. Benefits and Pitfalls of Two Approaches
Top-down
Benefits
Efficient: search can be more purposeful
Reliable: solid theories (usually)
Pitfalls
General theories may not be applicable to specific cases
Misled analysis
Bottom-up
May lead to new understandings
Misled by data (e.g., untruthful data)
Hard to be generalized: may not be theory at all.

16. Examples on Election Prediction
Top-down
models/keys-to-the-white-house/
Bottom
data-said-clinton-would-win-why-you-shouldnt-have- believed-it.html

17. Combination of Both
Top-down and bottom-up often are combined together.
Analysts need priori knowledge in analysis.
Know where to look at.
Data is often surprising and incomplete.
Need to understand data to build up new models/theories/frameworks.

19. Implications for Visual Analytics Design
Understanding analytical processes
Sensemaking
Supporting analytical activities
Visualizing data and the organization of data
Supporting processes

20. Sensemaking

21. What is Sensemaking?

22. What is sensemaking?
Sensemaking: a new or unfamiliar situation where people need to understand what is going on
Possessed knowledge is insufficient
Knowledge gap, dilemma, or an obstacle.
Example
Encountering an error in your programming assignment
Getting lost in a foreign city

24. What is sensemaking?
Sensemaking: a new or unfamiliar situation where people need to understand what is going on
Possessed knowledge is insufficient
Knowledge gap, dilemma, or an obstacle.
Example
Encountering an error in your programming assignment
Getting lost in a foreign city
Outcomes of sensemaking
New knowledge
New problem solving techniques

25. Essence of Sensemaking
A process that involves learning, doing, and understanding.
User involvement is required.
A process in which user activities are often situated.
Different knowledge context, task context, information context, etc.
A process that consists of information gathering, interpretation, and synthesis.
Success or failure of sensemaking is relative.
All depend on what contexts sensemaking is conducted and achieved.
It is hard to automate sensemaking processes.

26. Supporting Sensemaking

27. Using Visualization to Support Sensemaking Processes
Help people collect information
Help people understand and analyze information
Help people organize information
Help people understand their activities

28. Two Projects CiteSense
Helping people search, collect, evaluation, and organize research papers
Demo

29. Two Projects CiteSense SocialNetSense
Helping people search, collect, evaluation, and organize research papers
Demo
SocialNetSense
Helping people understand the process of social network processes

30. In Summary
Understanding visual analytic processes is important to good design
We still don’t have reliable theories yet.
Current VA systems are more ad hoc.
Specific tasks
Specific data sets
Specific users

31. Project Report Implementation
A section to summarize your tasks and designs presented early on.
A section to describe what tools you are going to use for data processing, and visualization design.

32. Individual Homework
Revisit the puzzle and think about what can be done more to support the analysis of the problem
What specific tasks do you need?
Information side, grid side, linking them together
How well does the grid tool support these tasks?
You can draw your design on paper, with computer drawing tools, or whatever you feel comfortable.