Improvisational Geovisualization of the 2000 United States Census
Chris Weaver · 2006
The development of software tools for visual data analysis is a recent focus of research in both information and geographic visualization. The goal is to allow users to explore information that contains geospatial, temporal, and abstract components in a flexible, integrated, interactive graphical environment that requires minimal training to use. Improvise is an exploratory visualization software package in which users construct and explore multiple interactively connected views of their data. Improvise gives users precise control over how spatial navigation and item selection affects the presentation of space, time, and abstract data attributes in and between multi-layer maps, scatter plots, parallel coordinate plots, tables, grids, and other views. This paper describes application of Improvise visualization to county-level demographic data from the 2000 United States Census. Tight integration of building and browsing made it possible to realize a usable and useful dynamic display of Census data in a few days. The visualization can be rapidly modified and extended during ongoing exploration and analysis. 1.