Known Unknowns: Representing Uncertainty in Historical Time
Florian Kräutli, Stephen Boyd Davis · Electronic workshops in computing · 2013
Historic time is inherently uncertain, with missing, disputed, doubtful or ill-defined dates for objects and events. Yet digital timeline visualisations tend to represent it as exact and of undisputed confidence. This is partly due to a lack of awareness, partly due to a lack of support for ambiguities in digital data types and modes of representation. We outline some of the issues around uncertainty in timeline visualisation and ways of addressing them.