A multidimensional data visualization method based on parallel coordinates and enhanced ring

Abstract

When Analyzing multidimensional, quantitative data set, statistics of value distribution in each dimension, and comparison of two or more dimensions are common tasks in many domains, such as students' scores, college admissions and stocks. In this paper, we present a multidimensional data visualization method based on parallel coordinates and enhanced ring (PCER). The interactive scheme allows users to do a preliminary statistics on data to get an overview of data's distribution. Users can change the display proportion of one single dimension or all dimensions according to the preliminary statistical results and relative statistical requirement. The enhanced ring will show the distribution of the clutter area in parallel coordinates according to statistical results to help users getting more detailed information about data distribution and relationships among data. Data are filtered by the interaction between parallel coordinates and enhanced ring according to user's statistical requirement to reduce the size of dataset and optimize the visualization effect. The experiment on students' scores shows that PCER is efficient in presenting and quantizing the distribution of students' scores.