Interactive Visualization of Small World Graphs

  • Authors:
  • Frank van Ham;Jarke J. van Wijk

  • Affiliations:
  • Technische Universiteit Eindhoven;Technische Universiteit Eindhoven

  • Venue:
  • INFOVIS '04 Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Many real world graphs have small world characteristics, that is, they have a small diameter compared to the number of nodes and exhibit a local cluster structure. Examples are social networks, software structures, bibliographic references and biological neural nets. Their high connectivity makes both finding a pleasing layout and a suitable clustering hard. In this paper we present a method to create scalable, interactive visualizations of small world graphs, allowing the user to inspect local clusters while maintaining a global overview of the entire structure. The visualization method uses a combination of both semantical and geometrical distortions, while the layout is generated by a spring embedder algorithm using a recently developed force model. We use a cross referenced database of 500 artists as a running example.