Understanding Visualization: A Formal Approach using Category Theory and Semiotics
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2012) (to appear)
Publication Year
2012
Authors
Joe Faith, Paul Vickers, Nick Rossiter
BibTeX
Abstract
This article combines the vocabulary of semiotics and category theory to provide a
formal analysis of visualization. It shows how familiar processes of visualization
fit the semiotic frameworks of both Saussure and Peirce, and extends these
structures using the tools of category theory to provide a general framework for
understanding visualization in practice, including: relationships between systems,
data collected from those systems, renderings of those data in the form of
representations, the reading of those representations to create visualizations, and
the use of those visualizations to create knowledge and understanding of the system
under inspection. The resulting framework is validated by demonstrating how
familiar information visualization concepts (such as literalness, sensitivity,
redundancy, ambiguity, generalizability, and chart junk) arise naturally from it
and can be defined formally and precisely. This article generalizes previous work
on the formal characterization of visualization by, inter alia, Ziemkiewicz and
Kosara and allows us to formally distinguish properties of the visualization
process that previous work does not.
