Visualizing Multidimensional Data with Glyph SPLOMs

• Published in: Computer graphics forum Vol. 33; no. 3; pp. 301 - 310
• Main Authors: Yates, A., Webb, A., Sharpnack, M., Chamberlin, H., Huang, K., Machiraju, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2014
• Subjects: Analysis; Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS); Correlation; Demography; Developmental biology; Dynamical systems; Dynamics; Gene expression; H.5.0 [Information Interfaces]: General; Health; Hierarchies; Information processing; International; Multidimensional data; Strength; Studies; Visualization
• ISSN: 0167-7055; 1467-8659
• DOI: 10.1111/cgf.12386

Scatterplot matrices or SPLOMs provide a feasible method of visualizing and representing multi‐dimensional data especially for a small number of dimensions. For very high dimensional data, we introduce a novel technique to summarize a SPLOM, as a clustered matrix of glyphs, or a Glyph SPLOM. Each glyph visually encodes a general measure of dependency strength, distance correlation, and a logical dependency class based on the occupancy of the scatterplot quadrants. We present the Glyph SPLOM as a general alternative to the traditional correlation based heatmap and the scatterplot matrix in two examples: demography data from the World Health Organization (WHO), and gene expression data from developmental biology. By using both, dependency class and strength, the Glyph SPLOM illustrates high dimensional data in more detail than a heatmap but with more summarization than a SPLOM. More importantly, the summarization capabilities of Glyph SPLOM allow for the assertion of “necessity” causal relationships in the data and the reconstruction of interaction networks in various dynamic systems.