the plot, the clutter, the sampling and its lens: occlusion measures for automatic clutter reduction

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated the use of random sampling in visualising large data sets and the practicality of a sampling lens in enabling focus+context viewing. Autosampling was proposed as a mechanism to maintain constant density within the lens without user intervention. However, this requires rapid calculation of density or clutter. This paper defines clutter in terms of the occlusion of plotted points and evaluates three possible occlusion metrics that can be used with parallel coordinate plots. An empirical study showed the relationship between these metrics was independent of location and could be explained with a surprisingly simple probabilistic model.