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Fig. 3.16
Streams of topics in Fidel Castro's speeches and other documents (Reprinted from
Havre et al.
2000
)
river, in which topics of interest flow along a dimension of time, usually placed
horizontally and pointing from the left to the right. The timeline provides an
organizing framework so that a wide variety of information can be organized
according to its state at a particular point of time. Figure
3.16
shows a ThemeRiver
visualization of topics found in a collection of Fidel Castro's speeches, interviews,
articles, and other text. The visualization represents the variations of topics from the
beginning of 1960 through the middle of 1961. The famous Cuban missile crisis
took place in about the same period of time. The topics are represented by the
frequencies of relevant terms appeared in each month. Major events are annotated
on the top with dashed lines drawn vertically at the time of events. For example, the
timeline visualization shows that Cuba and Soviet resumed diplomatic relations in
May 1960 and Castro confiscates American refineries around the end of June 1960.
Castro mentioned Soviet 49 times in September. The continuity of a topic is shown
as a continuous stream of varying width across time.
The ThemeRiver-style timeline visualization is suitable to a wide range of
applications. New York Times, for example, featured an interactive visualization of
popular movies in terms of their box office revenue.
2
The streams of movies tend
to be short lived, which is understandable because our attention span to a particular
movie won't last forever. The appearance of streams makes them more like the
peaks of mountains. Perhaps just to be more consistent with the timeline metaphor,
we should consider them as the tips of icebergs floating from the past to the future.
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