ABSTRACT
A major application area of computer graphics is visualization, where computer-generated images are used to help people understand both spatial and nonspatial data. Visualization is used when the goal is to augment human capabilities in situations where the problem is not sufficiently well defined for a computer to handle algorithmically. If a totally automatic solution can completely replace human judgment, then visualization is not typically required. Visualization can be used to generate new hypotheses when exploring a completely unfamiliar dataset, to confirm existing hypotheses in a partially understood dataset, or to present information about a known dataset to another audience. Visualization allows people to offload cognition to the perceptual system, using carefully designed images as a form of external memory. The human visual system is a very high-bandwidth channel to the brain, with a significant amount of processing occurring in parallel and at the pre-conscious level.
