Visual Analytics - Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization - page 316

Chapter 9
Visual Analytics

Visual analytics is regarded as the second generation of computer supported visual
thinking after information visualization. The widely known mission for information
visualization is to obtain insights by laying out information in front of us. Gestalt
psychology has played an implicit but significant role because we expect to benefit
from emergent patterns and properties that can only make sense when we look
at relevant information as a whole. No wonder Shneiderman's mantra for visual
information retrieval starts from an overview.
Visual analytics focuses on analytic reasoning and decision making. Although
sense making is one part of the analytic process, the outcome of the visual thinking
is now clearly insight and it has to be taken into account. The emphasis of
making decisions with incomplete information of potentially high uncertainty is
fundamental to visual analytics. The role of evidence becomes an integral part of our
decision system in terms of the quality, the provenance, the credibility of evidence,
and the implications of updated evidence. Visual analytics sets insights in context
and it drives the process of visual thinking towards a realistic resolution of a complex
situation. In this chapter, we describe a few systems in the broadly defined visual
analytics. We will highlight how each system is designed to facilitate the reasoning
and decision making process. Figure 9.1 shows a screenshot of GeoTime, a visual
analytic system for investigating events in both spatial and temporal dimensions.

9.1 CiteSpace

CiteSpace is a Java application for visualizing and analyzing emerging trends and
patterns in scientific literature. The design of CiteSpace is motivated to achieve two
ambitious goals. One is to provide a computational alternative to supplement the
traditional systematic reviews and surveys of a body of scientific literature. The
other is to provide an analytic tool so that one can study the structure and dynamics