Science in a Blink: Supporting Ensemble Perception in Scalar Fields

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Mateevitsi, Victor A., Papka, Michael E., Reda, Khairi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Mateevitsi, Victor A.
Papka, Michael E.
Reda, Khairi
author_facet Mateevitsi, Victor A.
Papka, Michael E.
Reda, Khairi
contents Visualizations support rapid analysis of scientific datasets, allowing viewers to glean aggregate information (e.g., the mean) within split-seconds. While prior research has explored this ability in conventional charts, it is unclear if spatial visualizations used by computational scientists afford a similar ensemble perception capacity. We investigate people's ability to estimate two summary statistics, mean and variance, from pseudocolor scalar fields. In a crowdsourced experiment, we find that participants can reliably characterize both statistics, although variance discrimination requires a much stronger signal. Multi-hue and diverging colormaps outperformed monochromatic, luminance ramps in aiding this extraction. Analysis of qualitative responses suggests that participants often estimate the distribution of hotspots and valleys as visual proxies for data statistics. These findings suggest that people's summary interpretation of spatial datasets is likely driven by the appearance of discrete color segments, rather than assessments of overall luminance. Implicit color segmentation in quantitative displays could thus prove more useful than previously assumed by facilitating quick, gist-level judgments about color-coded visualizations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_14452
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Science in a Blink: Supporting Ensemble Perception in Scalar Fields
Mateevitsi, Victor A.
Papka, Michael E.
Reda, Khairi
Human-Computer Interaction
Visualizations support rapid analysis of scientific datasets, allowing viewers to glean aggregate information (e.g., the mean) within split-seconds. While prior research has explored this ability in conventional charts, it is unclear if spatial visualizations used by computational scientists afford a similar ensemble perception capacity. We investigate people's ability to estimate two summary statistics, mean and variance, from pseudocolor scalar fields. In a crowdsourced experiment, we find that participants can reliably characterize both statistics, although variance discrimination requires a much stronger signal. Multi-hue and diverging colormaps outperformed monochromatic, luminance ramps in aiding this extraction. Analysis of qualitative responses suggests that participants often estimate the distribution of hotspots and valleys as visual proxies for data statistics. These findings suggest that people's summary interpretation of spatial datasets is likely driven by the appearance of discrete color segments, rather than assessments of overall luminance. Implicit color segmentation in quantitative displays could thus prove more useful than previously assumed by facilitating quick, gist-level judgments about color-coded visualizations.
title Science in a Blink: Supporting Ensemble Perception in Scalar Fields
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14452