Abstract
Treemaps has been used as diagrams in cartography to visualize hierarchical, multivariate, and time series data through the construction of hierarchies. Several algorithms exist for generating Treemaps. Despite the popularity of the Treemap, few studies have analyzed the effectiveness and efficiency of different algorithms. A user study was conducted to evaluate the slice-and-dice, squarified, ordered, strip, and ordered squarified algorithms. In the user study, the accuracy and response time for completing tasks were recorded. The slice-and-dice algorithm was identified as most suitable to represent true hierarchy (intrinsic hierarchy), followed by pivot-by-size. Slice-and-dice was also identified as the most suitable algorithm for representing false hierarchy (imposed hierarchy). When representing time series, slice-and-dice, strip, and ordered squarified algorithms were all determined to be suitable.
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the suggestions and comments from Michael Peterson and the anonymous reviewers. Our work was supported by the Special Program for Basic Science of China under Grant No. 2013FY112800.
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Zhou, M., Cheng, Y., Ye, N., Tian, J. (2017). Effectiveness and Efficiency of Using Different Types of Rectangular Treemap as Diagrams in Cartography. In: Peterson, M. (eds) Advances in Cartography and GIScience. ICACI 2017. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57336-6_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57336-6_14
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