Visualization Techniques for Trees, Graphs, and Networks

While most of the visualization techniques discussed thus far focus on the display of data values and their attributes, another important application of visualization is the conveying of relational information, e.g., how data items or records are related to each other. These interrelationships can take many forms:

• part/subpart, parent/child, or other hierarchical relation;

• connectedness, such as cities connected by roads or computers connected by networks;

• derived from, as in a sequence of steps or stages;

• shared classification;

• similarities in values;

• similarities in attributes (e.g., spatial, temporal).