2021/08/02 by Botong Qu, Qu, Botong, Eugene Zhang +3
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Data Management and Algorithms #Data Visualization and Analytics #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Graphics (cs.GR) #K.6.1
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.00671
openalex publication_date 2021/08/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
N-ary relationships, which relate N entities where N is not necessarily two, can be visually represented as polygons whose vertices are the entities of the relationships. Manually generating a high-quality layout using this representation is labor-intensive. In this paper, we provide an automatic polygon layout generation algorithm for the visualization of N-ary relationships. At the core of our algorithm is a set of objective functions motivated by a number of design principles that we have identified. These objective functions are then used in an optimization framework that we develop to achieve high-quality layouts. Recognizing the duality between entities and relationships in the data, we provide a second visualization in which the roles of entities and relationships in the original data are reversed. This can lead to additional insight about the data. Furthermore, we enhance our framework for a joint optimization on the primal layout (original data) and the dual layout (where the roles of entities and relationships are reversed). This allows users to inspect their data using two complementary views. We apply our visualization approach to a number of datasets that include co-authorship data and social contact pattern data.