High-dimensional data visualization

Note:

This paper introduced the basic figure plots to display the multi-dimensional data. The mentioned schemes included:

• Mosaic Plots

This plot is good for categorical data display, for the user to compare the different between features. But it requires the user to pay attention to multiple directions (top/bottom, left/right), which makes it harder to follow, less user perception. Besides, this plot provides a quick overview categorically, but for ordinal and interval variables.

• Trellis Displays

Nice to provide a comparison between variables, not suitable for temporal data and categorical data. Besides, many of the cells may repeating or empty.

• Parallel Coordinate Plots

Nice to show the temporal data, requires the skill to solve the overplotting, scaling and sorting problems.

• Projection Pursuit and the Grand Tour

Not easy for the human brand to process a 3D plot, but it shows the dynamic between the dimension projection. For instance, using a scatterplot with 3 dimensions, let the user explore the pattern across dimensions, is one type of grand tour.

Summary

A summary with the functionality of exploration and presentation included the interactivity of each plot. However, I think the Trellis may also provide interactively, e.g. this demo. 

Reference

1. Theus, Martin. "High-dimensional data visualization." Handbook of data visualization. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008. 151-178.