Understanding Visualization: A formal approach using category theory and semiotics

Paul Vickers, Joe Faith, Nick Rossiter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)
29 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article combines the vocabulary of semiotics and category theory to provide a formal analysis of visualization. It shows how familiar processes of visualization fit the semiotic frameworks of both Saussure and Peirce, and extends these structures using the tools of category theory to provide a general framework for understanding visualization in practice, including: relationships between systems, data collected from those systems, renderings of those data in the form of representations, the reading of those representations to create visualizations, and the use of those visualizations to create knowledge and understanding of the system under inspection. The resulting framework is validated by demonstrating how familiar information visualization concepts (such as literalness, sensitivity, redundancy, ambiguity, generalizability, and chart junk) arise naturally from it and can be defined formally and precisely. This article generalizes previous work on the formal characterization of visualization by, inter alia, Ziemkiewicz and Kosara and allows us to formally distinguish properties of the visualization process that previous work does not.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1048-1061
JournalIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Volume19
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2013

Keywords

  • G mathematics of computing
  • Information visualization
  • category theory
  • semiotics

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