Informatics 143 Information Visualization Quiz Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from Information Visualization, including color scales, visualization types, and smoothing techniques.

Categorical Variable Mapping Order

The sequence in which categorical variables are assigned to aesthetics, which is very important because different orders will reveal different patterns.

Qualitative color scale

A type of color scale used for categorical data without an inherent order.

Divergent color scale

A color scale that branches out in two directions from a central midpoint, often used to show deviation from a mean or zero.

Sequential color scale

A color scale that uses a single hue or a range of similar hues to represent ordered data values.

Accent color scale

A color scale specifically designed to highlight certain data points against a more neutral background.

Ridgeline plot

A visualization consisting of multiple density plots that are shifted and stacked along the y-axis.

geom_parallel_sets()

A function within the ggforce package used in ggplot2 to create parallel set plots.

Mosaic plot

A standard geometric mapping used for the visualization of multiple proportions simultaneously.

Treemap

A visualization style for multiple proportions that uses nested rectangles to represent data hierarchies.

Parallel sets

Visualizations used for multiple categorical variables, typically effective for a small number of variables (fewer than 3).

Dimensionality reduction

A group of techniques used in visualization that are only effective if there are correlated variables within the dataset.

Bubble chart

A type of scatter plot where point size represents a variable; it often requires scale discretization for effective human interpretation of the continuous sizes.

Pair plot

A matrix of scatter plots used to visualize multiple dimensions, though it cannot work for an arbitrarily large number of dimensions due to complexity.

Moving average

A smoothing technique adopted for visualizations to reduce noise in time-series data.

Splines

A technique used for smoothing visualizations by fitting polynomial curves to the data points.

Function fitting

A method that creates a trendline with a fitted functional form and parameters, which can be interpreted more easily than a general smoothing curve.