Perceiving Patterns In Data

IF you find yourself

Designing a display to support exploration and discovery of patterns in complex multi-attribute, multi-dimensional and/or time-varying data

for example

• e1: predicting the direction of stock prices from depth of market stock data [Nesbitt and Barrass 2002] http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2002/proceedings/51_KeithNesbitt.pdf
• e2: analyzing high dimensional data sets [Hermann and Ritter 2002] http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2002/proceedings/23_Thomas_Hermann_CSO.pdf
• e3: exploring patterns in spectral oceanography data [Sturm 2002] http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2002/proceedings/07_BobSturm.pdf

with the problem that

it is difficult to perceive higher level information about relations between attributes in conventional graphs and impossible to perceive patterns in tables of data values

entailing forces

• f1: the need to perceive global information about the entire data set
• f2: the need to perceive intermediate level information about relations between attributes as they vary over time
• f3: the need to perceive local level information about how individual attributes vary with time

THEN

Use a sonification to provide time varying information about multiple attributes

Apply

The primitive level heuristics from Bregmans theory of auditory scene analysis [Bregman 1991] http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/auditory/book.html to map data attributes onto the attributes of auditory streams [Rivenez et al. 2002] http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2002/proceedings/38_MRivenez.pdf

to construct

auditory streams that perceptually group and segregate to reflect higher level relations between attributes

leading to

the capability to explore and find patterns in complex data by listening to it

and

a perceptually structured information soundscape

---

References

Bregman A.S. (1990) Auditory Scene Analysis, The MIT Press, 1990.

Hermann T. and Ritter H. (2002) Crystallization Sonification of High Dimensional Datasets, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display ICAD 2002, Kyoto, July 2-5, 2002.

Nesbitt K.V. and Barrass S. (2002) Evaluation of a Multimodal Sonification and Visualization of Depth of Market Stock Data, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display ICAD 2002, Kyoto, July 2-5, 2002.

Rivenez M. Drake C. Guillaume A. Detry S. (2002) Listening to Environmental Scenes in Real Time, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display ICAD 2002, Kyoto, July 2-5, 2002.

Sturm B.L. (2002) Surf Music: Sonification of Ocean Buoy Spectral Data, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display ICAD 2002, Kyoto, July 2-5, 2002.