ABSTRACT
Since every visualization starts with the data that is to be displayed, a first step in addressing the design of visualizations is to examine the characteristics of the data. Data comes from many sources; it can be gathered from sensors or surveys, or it can be generated by simulations and computations. Data can be raw (untreated), or it can be derived from raw data via some process, such as smoothing, noise removal, scaling, or interpolation. It also can have a wide range of characteristics and structures.
