Information Technology Reference
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C HAPTER T HREE
T HE M ULTIPLE V ISUAL A TTRIBUTES OF S HAPE
R ICHARD B RATH
Abstract
There are many different types of shape attributes that can be used to
encode data for information visualizations. Prior art from many fields and
experiments suggest that there are more than half a dozen different
attributes of shape that can potentially be used effectively to represent
categorical and quantitative data values.
Introduction
In data visualization, data attributes are transformed into visual attributes
such as position, size, colour and shape. These concepts were formalized
initially by Jacques Bertin [Ber67] who defined an initial core set of visual
attributes (size, brightness, texture, hue, orientation, and shape) and
identified which visual attributes were suited to different kinds of visual
tasks (Fig. 3.1). For example, the attribute hue works well for
distinguishing categories but is less effective for estimating magnitude.
Position
Size
Brightness
Texture
Hue
Orientation
Shape
Fig. 3.1. Visual attributes, originally defined by Bertin [Ber67].
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