Information visualization is not only about creating graphical displays of complex and latent information structures; it contributes to a broader range of cognitive, social, and collaborative activities. This is the first book to examine information visualization from this perspective.
This 2nd edition continues the unique and ambitious quest for setting information visualization and virtual environments in a unifying framework. Information Visualization: Beyond the Horizon pays special attention to the advances made over the last 5 years and potentially fruitful directions to pursue. It is particularly updated to meet the need for practitioners. The book is a valuable source for researchers and graduate students. This new edition is forwarded by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland.
Key features:
Latest advances in information visualization.
Applications of information visualization, including knowledge domain visualization, knowledge diffusion, and social networks.
Detecting topics, emergent trends, and abrupt changes.
Empirical findings concerning information visualization.
Virtual environments and collaborative virtual environments.
Chaomei Chen is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. He is the author of Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization (Springer, 2003).
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Essential Reference, Slightly Disappointing for Me Personally:
I had already decided to grade this a four instead of five, in part because it makes me cranky when world-class authors such as the author of this book neglect other world-class pioneers because of their unwillingness to do a proper search outside their own narrow boundaries. I refer of course to Dick Klavens, Brad Ashford, and Katy Borner, whose Maps of Science are online and spectacular. Even Eugene Garfield, the inventor of citation analysis, gets short shrift. That aside, the book is an essential... more info
cool graphics ideas:
Chen gives a masterful excursion into how information can be visualised. A major aim is that it is presented in a way that a human can see a large mass of data in a meaningful manner. Hence many techniques are shown in numerous colour diagrams that are an indispensible part of the book. Indeed, the book would lack much meaning without those diagrams! The display ideas have mostly been developed in the last 15 years. In part due to increasing computational power and graphics, that makes such displaying... more info
Full of Ideas:
This is a beautiful book, with many color images. While it includes a large number of excellent figures, and covers a wide range techniques and systems, the text is not, however, a good starting point for a newcomer to the field. (See Card, et al, "Readings in Information Visualization" for a starting point.) This book should be used as a pointer to the literature, which provide the missing details. It covers a wide range techniques, and is worth having.
