Abstract
An overview of the history, development, and applications of visual analytics is provided. Readers familiar with some of the research and development aspects in visual analytics should also benefit from this review of the field’s genesis and objectives. The principal drivers for the generation of the field are summarized and the initial research and development agenda that followed from these is reviewed. The distinctive aspects of visual analytics are discussed in relation to other forms of visualization. A wide variety of software for visual analytics is summarized and a methodology for effective comparison is proposed. The current trend toward large collaborative research and development projects across institutions and organizations, and between the academy and industry, is analyzed and reviewed in the context of visualization research. A number of typical applications in interactive data visualization are presented, while recognizing the limitations of presenting these solely in a written and visual format when their power is normally in real-time interactive exploration. Aspects of current research and development in visual analytics are presented and compared with those in scientific visualization and information visualization. The question of whether visual analytics has subsumed the areas of information visualization and scientific visualization is considered. Possible future directions for visual analytics are explored.
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Earnshaw, R. (2019). Visual Analytics. In: Data Science and Visual Computing. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24367-8_6
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