Reaction: The Value of Information Visualization/ Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information

Paper1: The author of this paper begins by first defending that "Information Visualization" is a field that fetches money. He puts forward facts that convince the reader InfoVis is of industrial importance and not a field surviving purely on  research. The paper further describes the scenarios in which the InfoVis is of optimum value. It helps a user, totally unaware of the system to ask right questions instead of an expert of the field who has specific answers that he wants to know from the data. i.e. InfoVis "amplifies coginition" of unstudied data. The paper talks about "The Problem of Induction" and how visualization can aid observation and assuage this problem at hand. This paper in the later sections talks about cognitive and perceptual arguments. The paper has a study about the visualization covering multiple dimensions of Napolean's army's march on Moscow, the cholera epedimic. The paper in the later half talks about information visualization vs automatic analysis, the support InfoVis provides for data mining. Finally the author concludes with a hope that his paper has convinced the reader about the vitality of InfoVis.

Paper 2: This paper talks about the problems of making a tool that supports the graphical representation of data in various forms. Graphical representation can be of many forms including bar-charts, graphs, etc. This paper deals with the problems that arise for designing such a tool. In the introduction, the author explains the use of algebra, artificial intelligence, coloring scheme for building a graphical representation of the data in hand. The author talks about the use of 2d and 3d animations used for visualization. The paper then builds upon how to represent a problem graphically. This is explained with the help pf 2 examples which is followed by the explanation of equations used in graphs.  The author further dwells on factors like approach, expressiveness, effectiveness. In the later half of the paper, the author gives a in-depth discussion of the basic primitive graphical languages. Finally the paper concludes with the summary of general know how of all the important facets a designer should be aware of.