intro
Information Visualization1 Blog.
Interested in visualization as a tool for generating and analyzing information, prior to it becoming a final representation.
Certain relations and structures remain unknown until drawn.
︙
Simple Listing is also a technique:
Christoph Scheiner’s records of sunspots, organized on a single page. This technique, which involves comparing multiple graphs while keeping the reference axes fixed, is effective for analyzing changes. Fixing the axes serves the same purpose as placing objects on a level surface to compare their heights accurately.
2
Visualization through Modeling:
Erik Holmberg’s galaxy model using light bulbs and photocells. This experiment simulated galaxy collisions by substituting the change in light intensity between two approaching models for gravitational force. The data recorded from this experiment was later found to be fundamentally consistent with results obtained from digital computer simulations.
3
Dialogue on Modeling:
A physicist must always
guard against taking a visual model as more than a pedagogical device or
makeshift help. At the same time, he must also be alert to the
possibility that a visual model can, and sometimes does, turn out to be
literally accurate. (…) I recall talking to a chemist who objected at
the time to such diagrams.
“But are they not a great help?” I asked.
“Yes”, he said, “but we must warn our students not to think of these diagrams as representing actual spatial configurations. We really do not know anything at all about spatial structure on the molecular level. These diagrams are no more than diagrams, like a curve on a graph to illustrate an increase in population or pig-iron production. We all know that such a curve is only a metaphor. The population or the pig-iron is not rising in any spatial sense. Molecular pictures must be thought of in the same way. No one knows what sort of actual spatial structure molecules have.”
I agreed with chemist, but I argued that there was the passiblity, at least, that molecules might be linked together in just the way the diagrams indicated, especially in view of the fact that stereoisomers had been discovered, which made it convenient to think of one molecule as a mirror image of another. (…)
“It is true”, he replied, “that this is suggested. But we do not know for sure that this is the case.”
— Rudolf Carnap, “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science”, (Edited by Martin Gardner, Dover Publications, 1995).
Watching documentaries that deal with subjects beyond the human scope of time and space, it often feels as though the represented information exceeds what can actually be known.
Perhaps no content could have been produced if everything had been framed only in if-clauses.
Graphs generated by distance:
Aerial photographs of center-pivot irrigation in the desert. Even in arid regions, fossil water—rain from tens of thousands of years ago—is pumped up for agriculture. The farmland takes a circular shape because the water is supplied through rotation. Seen from above, it resembles a pie chart, with colors distinguishing the status of each field, the type of crop, and the stage of cultivation.
4
Spatial Information Visualization:
In the Marshall Islands, an archipelago of numerous small islands, seafaring navigation relies on traditional wave charts. These charts are based on the principle that wave patterns possess inherent regularity; wave height is influenced by water depth, and swells reflect or refract off landmasses much like sound waves. Consequently, specific underwater and coastal topographies generate distinct wave signatures. While the precise interpretation of these charts is a specialized knowledge reserved for trained locals, the system demonstrates how wave dynamics can be visualized as reliable navigational data.
5
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Even this is a case of information visualization:
Tracing a circle in the air while explaining that the situation is repeating. Two options exist. Grabbing each one in turn, as if the air in front has solidified into two masses.
Anyway, anything is worth a visualization.
Contact
k.ann.shim@gmail.com
|
instagram.com/kyusun_nusuyk/
Interested in visualization as a tool for generating and analyzing information, prior to it becoming a final representation.
Certain relations and structures remain unknown until drawn.
︙
Simple Listing is also a technique:
Christoph Scheiner’s records of sunspots, organized on a single page. This technique, which involves comparing multiple graphs while keeping the reference axes fixed, is effective for analyzing changes. Fixing the axes serves the same purpose as placing objects on a level surface to compare their heights accurately.
2 Visualization through Modeling:
Erik Holmberg’s galaxy model using light bulbs and photocells. This experiment simulated galaxy collisions by substituting the change in light intensity between two approaching models for gravitational force. The data recorded from this experiment was later found to be fundamentally consistent with results obtained from digital computer simulations.
3 Dialogue on Modeling:
“But are they not a great help?” I asked.
“Yes”, he said, “but we must warn our students not to think of these diagrams as representing actual spatial configurations. We really do not know anything at all about spatial structure on the molecular level. These diagrams are no more than diagrams, like a curve on a graph to illustrate an increase in population or pig-iron production. We all know that such a curve is only a metaphor. The population or the pig-iron is not rising in any spatial sense. Molecular pictures must be thought of in the same way. No one knows what sort of actual spatial structure molecules have.”
I agreed with chemist, but I argued that there was the passiblity, at least, that molecules might be linked together in just the way the diagrams indicated, especially in view of the fact that stereoisomers had been discovered, which made it convenient to think of one molecule as a mirror image of another. (…)
“It is true”, he replied, “that this is suggested. But we do not know for sure that this is the case.”
— Rudolf Carnap, “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science”, (Edited by Martin Gardner, Dover Publications, 1995).
Watching documentaries that deal with subjects beyond the human scope of time and space, it often feels as though the represented information exceeds what can actually be known.
Perhaps no content could have been produced if everything had been framed only in if-clauses.
Graphs generated by distance:
Aerial photographs of center-pivot irrigation in the desert. Even in arid regions, fossil water—rain from tens of thousands of years ago—is pumped up for agriculture. The farmland takes a circular shape because the water is supplied through rotation. Seen from above, it resembles a pie chart, with colors distinguishing the status of each field, the type of crop, and the stage of cultivation.
4 Spatial Information Visualization:
In the Marshall Islands, an archipelago of numerous small islands, seafaring navigation relies on traditional wave charts. These charts are based on the principle that wave patterns possess inherent regularity; wave height is influenced by water depth, and swells reflect or refract off landmasses much like sound waves. Consequently, specific underwater and coastal topographies generate distinct wave signatures. While the precise interpretation of these charts is a specialized knowledge reserved for trained locals, the system demonstrates how wave dynamics can be visualized as reliable navigational data.
5
︙
Even this is a case of information visualization:
Tracing a circle in the air while explaining that the situation is repeating. Two options exist. Grabbing each one in turn, as if the air in front has solidified into two masses.
Anyway, anything is worth a visualization.
1 The word 'information' already contains the concept of
'giving shape' (-formation). While "data visualization" often sounds
like a technical term, I use "Information Visualization" to emphasize
this transformative process twice—a deliberate redundancy, much like the
phrase 'past history.'
2 James R. Akerman and Robert
W. Karrow Jr., eds., "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World" (University
of Chicago Press, 2007).
3
Erik
Holmberg, "On the Clustering Tendency among the Nebulae," The
Astrophysical Journal 94 (1941)
4
NASA
Earth Observatory, "Center Pivot Irrigation in Saudi Arabia"
5 Marcia Ascher, "Mathematics Elsewhere: An
Exploration of Ideas Across Cultures" (Princeton University Press,
2002).
English Translation: Gemini
Contact
k.ann.shim@gmail.com
|
instagram.com/kyusun_nusuyk/
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