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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Gill Sans MT"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Gill Sans MT"'>Well, here it is…<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Gill Sans MT"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Gill Sans MT"'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Response to “Visualizing Knowledge Domains” by Katy Börner,
Chaomei Chen, and Kevin W. Boyack<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I enjoyed reading this chapter because it was a good (if relatively
superficial) introduction to a variety of data reduction and information
visualization techniques that are in use and under development. I think it
will be a great resource for future exploration of topics in infoviz since the
bibliography is so extensive. I have to admit that since I’m not
familiar with many of the statistical/mathematical/programming techniques or
fundamentals, the actual concepts that underlie several of the techniques
described remain something of a mystery to me. As I was reading the
descriptions, I kept thinking, “it would be really useful to have an
illustration for each of these,” and then when I got to the end, I
realized that the first endnote provides a link to online illustrations. After
looking at these images, the features of the visualizations created through the
various approaches became somewhat more apparent.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Beyond the specifics of how the individual algorithms work, there is
another thing that I’m somewhat confused about. This applies not necessarily
only to the techniques described in this chapter, but also to the online tools
that I saw when browsing the links on the course website. My question is this:
what data type/format is necessary as input type for each method/software
package? Which of these approaches require data that has already been
organized/reduced in some way, and which are suitable for processing natural
language text? I think that in many cases there will first be a categorization
step and then a data reduction step, but I’m still unsure about how to
choose programs that can help me do each of these. For example, of those that
can be used for semantic information visualization, which require that I know
the keywords before beginning, and which will find them for me? Which are
suitable only for visualizing things that are already discrete entities
(authors, papers, etc.)? I didn’t find very specific descriptions of many
of the tools anywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I guess what I would be interested in seeing is some sort of decision
tree or something like that that could help me identify potential viable
approach-software combinations for the sorts of analysis/visualization I would
like to do.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>There are two comments in the paper that have helped me to decide on
what sort of project I’d like to do for this class. The first is a
comment on page 2 of the pdf version: it’s about how one of the problems
with traditional approaches to painting the big picture of scientific knowledge
is that the survey methods used are subjective. This comment seems to apply
that these automated approaches are objective (or at least more objective). Later
in the paper, the authors also mention that multiple representations are
preferred to achieve a better understanding of the information content. These
comments make me think that it would be interesting to implement several of
these approaches on a modestly-sized dataset in order to compare the different
visualization solutions they arrive at. I’ll talk about this project
idea in my presentation.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>That’s it! I welcome comments, suggestions, or answers to any of
my questions. ;)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Stacy<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Gill Sans MT"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Gill Sans MT"'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>Stacy Rebich<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>Graduate Student<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>Department of Geography<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on"><font size=2
face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>University</span></font></st1:PlaceType><font
size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">California</st1:PlaceName></span></font></st1:place><font
size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=2
face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>Santa
Barbara</span></font></st1:City><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>, <st1:State w:st="on">CA</st1:State>
<st1:PostalCode w:st="on">93106</st1:PostalCode></span></font></st1:place><font
size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoAutoSig><font size=2 face="Book Antiqua"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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