A review, framework, and R toolkit for exploring, evaluating, and comparing visualization methods

Abstract

This paper gives a review and synthesis of methods of evaluating dimensionality reduction techniques. Particular attention is paid to rank-order neighborhood evaluation metrics. A framework is created for exploring dimensionality reduction quality through visualization. An associated toolkit is implemented in R. The toolkit includes scatterplots, heat maps, loess smoothing, performance lift diagrams, and animation. The overall rationale is to help researchers compare dimensionality reduction techniques and use visual insights to help select and improve techniques. Examples are given for dimensionality reduction in manifolds and for dimensionality reduction applied to fashion image and consumer survey datasets.