ABSTRACT
Computer-based visualization systems provide visual representations of datasets designed to help people carry out tasks more effectively. Visualization is suitable when there is a need to augment human capabilities rather than replace people with computational decision-making methods. The design space of possible vis idioms is huge, and includes the considerations of both how to create and how to interact with visual representations. Vis design is full of trade-offs, and most possibilities in the design space are ineffective for a particular task, so validating the effectiveness of a design is both necessary and difficult. The field of machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence where computers can handle a wide variety of new situations in response to data-driven training, rather than by being programmed with explicit instructions in advance. Vis allows people to offload internal cognition and memory usage to the perceptual system, using carefully designed images as a form of external representations, sometimes also called external memory.
