Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Reaction: Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods

The paper starts by claiming that graph design is unscientific, relies on common sense and feels the need to make it more systematic. This paper tries to add science into the field and adopts an approach that includes theory and experimentation which are critical aspects to test any scientific field.
The article has explained the mental-visual tasks performed by the observer to extract quantitative information from graphs in a comprehensive way and then ordered the tasks in order of accuracy of information decoding. The article tries to understand the perception and amount of data that the observer can decode through graphs.

There are 2 experiments mentioned in the paper to check the accuracy. The limitations are that the experiments depends on the observer's perception to a great extent, it depends on how the person perceives the graphic. I feel to give the experiment more generalization, the selection of the participants should have been mentioned.

Finally, it is mentioned that the experimental outcome proves the theory. This paper compells the reader to look at visualization design from a scientific viewpoint by giving experimental analysis..

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