Understanding Charts and Graphs.

Abstract

Many charts and graphs do not convey information effectively. This paper develops a way of analyzing the information in charts and graphs that reveals the design flaws in the display. The analytic scheme requires isolating four types of constituents in a display, and specifying their structure and interrelations at a syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic level of analysis. As the description is constructed, one checks for violations of acceptability principles, which are derived from facts about human visual information processing and from an analysis of the nature of symbols. Violations of these principles reveal the source of potential difficulties in using a display.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 28, 1987
Accession Number
ADA183409

Entities

People

  • Stephen M. Kosslyn

Organizations

  • Harvard University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Biological Sciences
  • Brain
  • Business Administration
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Analysis
  • Geography
  • Graphics
  • Information Processing
  • Information Science
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Military Research
  • Psychology
  • Semantics
  • Social Sciences

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Science.
  • Systems Analysis and Design