Reaction: Graphical Perception

The paper presents a set of theories and experimentation that attempts to explain how perception might influence our interpretation of data in a visual manner. Overall, the paper did a good job at explaining its theories, method of experimentation, expectation and results. The ample illustrations that accompany the paper provides great support for some of the arguments the authors are trying to make.

One particular note I find interesting was the way the experiment tries to guard against cognition. The experiments uses various methods to encourage subjects to rely much more heavily on their perceptive functions. As a result, the experiment resembles much more closely to our real life experiences of scanning or glancing at materials without thinking. As our world become much more graphical and our methodologies at presenting data matures, I wonder if we can continue to rely on the principles of this paper and take advantage of our perceptive functions.