Talk:Scientific visualization/Archive 1

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Merge

If you Google the term and look a the pages at Colleges and universities you will see that it is a fairly widespread academic pursuit, and that there are also vendors offering off-the-shelf or customized software for this. If you look at online catalogs such as the Library of Congress you will find several books on the topic. --AlainV 23:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Even though the distinction between scientific visulization and information visualization is not clear, information visualization is somewhat different, and merging them toghether might confuse some novice researchers and students. --[some anonymous user]

  • Anyone who thinks "scientific visualization" is "almost absolute nonsense" must be someone who has not attended years of "Vis 199x" and "Vis 200x" conferences, which make it very clear that the term has a large class of visualization projects that it refers to.Daqu 23:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The term "scientific visualization" is certainly meaningful, but it connotes a narrower field than "information visualization", which is perhaps has more currency as a term in recent years. The term "information visualiation" may be more likely to be encountered by lay readers, though I haven't conducted a survey to check this. I would recommend that "scientific visualization" redirect to "information visualization", but this isn't a big issue. -24.128.161.246 (talk) 16:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Disagree: As someone who has been working professionally in "scientific visualization" for the last 15 years, and having attended both the IEEE Vis and IEEE InfoVis conferences, I can say that there is a distinction between the two. While they have been coming closer and have significant overlap as fields in the last few years, they are separate disciplines. SeanAhern (talk) 12:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  • If you look at the references it is clear they are distinct fields. The refactoring of the two together had led to an article with a split personality, and no clear focus. (The reasoning for the original refactoring would put all the 'vis disciplines in 'information graphics', just because Tufte is cited) StephenDeGabrielle (talk) 22:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  • We need either;
    • a rollback to distinct articles
    • a rewrite to indicate the distinct disciplines, and link to appropriate resources; eg the infovis wiki and conferences for Infovis and SciVis, with a similar approach to the other fields being threatened with folding-into scivis. eg analytical vis, knowledge vis, etc.

StephenDeGabrielle (talk) 22:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge from Knowledge visualization

Knowledge visualization seems to be just a new phrase for scientific/information visualization. --Ronz 04:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Scientific visualization typically involves the visualization of numeric data but knowledge visualization is intended to capture the idea of the visualisation of symbolic data, either of the relational database sort or more expansively the representation of symbolic logic itself. Peter Eklund, 22 Sept, 2006.

  • Scientific visualization is an umbrella term that should include information visualization as a subcategory, though a very large subcategory that may even comprise about half of scientific visualization. "Information" implies that the raw data to be visualized is expressed in a formal manner, often corresponding to some type -- or combination of types -- of computer-science data structures. (One example of sci-vis that is probably better off not being called info-vis is the visualization of air flow, given a velocity vector field of this flow.)
    • Generally, visualization is the umbrella term, which contains scientific visualization and information visualization. Scientific vis is futher decomposed into volume and flow visualization. Each of these have a vast body of literature and need their own pages. The new field of visual analytics also needs to be described and put into context (it could eventually become the new umbrella term). --Robert Kosara 02:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • "Knowledge visualization" strikes me as a term whose meaning is still in the formative stages, and so perhaps it would be premature to say where this "ought" to go in any taxonomy of visualization types.Daqu 23:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Ronz - I totally disagree with you. Knowledge Visualization is not a new phrase for Scientific Visualization or even Information Visualization, it's indeed a different area of practice, study and research. Independently of defining the exact taxonomy of Visualization, which I acknowledge is not an easy task, we should nonetheless differentiate areas of study that are distinct. Just because there are several overlaps between Data Visualization, Information Visualization, Knowledge Visualization and Scientific Visualization doesn't mean we should choose one (in this case - Scientific Visualization) to be the all encompassing concept in this field.Mslima

Researchers

I went ahead and removed all researchers that didnt have an article. --Ronz 15:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

VIsual analytics merge w this page

I was referred here from a search for visual analytics, which was merged with scientific visualization.I will argue that this is a poor decision for two reasons:

1) This does not reflect the current state of affairs-- the IEEE has an annual Symposium in visual analytics ( http://conferences.computer.org/vast/vast2006/ ) , there is a US Gov. National Visualization and Analytics centre ( http://nvac.pnl.gov/ ) and 5 regional centres that do visual analytics, there is even a national research agenda funded by Gov in visual analytics etc. While some people argue that these fields should not be considered as independent, Wikipedia should reflect the current state of affairs.

2) By definition-- Visual Analytics was to my knowledge first defined in the research agenda document. That definition is " Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by the highly interactive visual interface". Emphasis here is on the reasoning aspect of interaction with visual interfaces. This differs subtantially from the emphasis of Infovis and scivis.

--Brfisher 22:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

As a new user, you might find creating a new page fairly intimidating. Help:Starting_a_new_page should help you. Personally, I'd start by creating a section here within Scientific visualization first, then see what others think of expanding it further to it's own page.

--Ronz 23:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I made a few inquiries to colleagues and they claim there is a history here, a company has trademarked the term Visual Analytics and has reverted the entry with that title to fit their company's interests prior to the merge with sciviz. I'd like to inform myself about that process before jumping in-- where can I find the history of a page that no longer exists?

--Brfisher 23:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I found this Talk:Visual_Analytics and it's history. There was hardly anything on the page before it was merged here. All the more reason to start a section in an established and related article first. --Ronz 00:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

How about a picture!

This is an article that's just *DYING* for a nice juicy picture. I don't have anything under an appropriate license, though. --Zzthex 04:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

SeanAhern just added one. Thanks! --Ronz 17:01, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome. I really would like to add more. One thing that I think is missing in this article is a nice breakdown, with illustrations and images, of the various kinds of visualizations. We discuss them, to some extent, but illustrative examples will really help draw out some of the distinctions between scientific visualization, information visualization, high-dimensional analysis, geospatial vis, etc. SeanAhern 00:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

External links

Per WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, the external links need to be cleaned up. I propose removing all the research labs and the like. If there's a link to a site that includes such a list, that would make a good replacement. The visualization software links should also go, but I encourage someone to make an appropriate article for such a list. --Ronz 18:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. This page could start becoming just a huge list of links to software. As much as I'd love to list my R&D100 award-winning software, Wikipedia is not meant to be a source for this. I would propose removing all software links. SeanAhern 15:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I did some cleanup of the links, mostly just removing the most obvious WP:EL and WP:SPAM problems. There are some nice links left that would add a lot to readers if they could be incorporated into the article if someone could find sources to demonstrate their notability. --Ronz 17:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I organized the two internal links lists (Related Research Areas, and Researchers in visualization) all into a See also, along with a few that were in the external links section. --Ronz 17:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


I removed the list of software that was slowly building up. I think the external links section should be trimmed down substantially so it's not such a magnet for inappropriate links. --Ronz 19:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Refactoring needed

This page is in dire need of refactoring. In the first place we need an umbrella topic, [Computer] Visualization, that links out to scientific visualization and information visualization. Pages 6 and up of the introduction to Readings in Information Visualization (see References on wikipedia page) can provide great guidance in this regard. The book provides strong definitions for visualization, scivis and infovis. To quote, visualization is "the use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of data to amplify cognition." As for the difference between scivis and infovis, I contend that there is a crisp distinction. InfoVis is the visualization of abstract data. SciVis, on the other hand, is the visualization of physical data which already bears an inherent relation to space and other natural dimensions like time. (This is my own wording and reinterpretation of the definitions from page 7 of Readings in InfoVis.)

I further believe that data mining should not be mentioned in the first paragraph. It's true that data mining and visualization touch (visual data mining), but that is not a "first fact" about [scientific] visualization. Moreover the claim that data mining offers "many abstract visualizations related to these visualization types" is, as far as I am concerned, wrong. Data mining is a very general process that, briefly, involves extracting useful information from data. Data mining need not have anything to do with visualization.

Lastly, I agree with the poster below who disputes the merge with visual analytics. Visual analytics is a sub-area in visualization. You can find a working definition of visual analytics, and how it relates to scivis an infovis, here http://infoviz.pnl.gov/pdf/visualAnalytics.pdf.Visbo 04:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

This page desperately needs expanding. It's a very brief description of scientific visualization, and doesn't even describe simulation, a source of a tremendous about of data for sci vis. Things like the ASC project's ASCI White or ASC BlueGene/L should probably be mentioned.

Another thing that would greatly help this page are pictures of scientific visualizations. Considering its graphic nature, scientific visualization can best be understood by pictures. User:24.5.239.114

Fully agreed, and not only does this page need work, the various pages that link here need to be written too, like Information Visualization, etc. The discussion on this page shows how badly needed this page really is. Simulation is a separate topic though, and should have its own page. --Robert Kosara 02:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Agree too with split between scivis and infovis types. I had been looking at Knowledge visualization as more describing what I was interested in but Information visualization is a better term. Also I object to having it so tightly tied up with 'visual' representations, aural and haptic work too never mind kinesthetic which can really give a good feel for a subject. I'm more interested in representations of mathematics and that is quite diffrent from scientific visualization of swarths of data. -Dmcq 09:41, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I've completed my long-threatened revision of the visual analytics section here, I'd be interested in comments on both the changes and the idea that visual analytics as the science of human cognition using a visualization ought to have its own page that links here. An alternative approach might be to take the general term "interaction science" that some of the NVAC leaders use and give that the solo page that links back to visual analytics as its instantiation in the visualization technology world here. Problem is that interaction science is not in common use, and will likely get into hot water with the HCI folks. Brfisher 03:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

If interaction science has merit; ie it is used and defined in refereed journals I don't see why it can't have a page? I think it would it be worth raising on the main HCI page? StephenDeGabrielle 20:23, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Refactoring Proposal

  1. umbrella topic, [Computer] Visualization, that links out to scientific visualization and information visualization, and Knowledge Visualisation. visual analytics be given it's own page (allowing a possible future link from 'interaction science')

StephenDeGabrielle 20:23, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Also;

  • source associated images with a GFDL-compatible license

It is worth noting that some sort of edit-war took place on the original Information visualization, leading to its erosion, and eventual merging into Scientific Visualisation. StephenDeGabrielle 21:06, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


Merging proposal

Merge 4D - Time-lapsed series of 3D earth models with this one? The article has very little content and seems to fit into this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.94.57 (talk) 12:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

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