An object-based graphical user interface for time series analysis

Abstract

We propose a graphical user interface (GUI) of a statistical system largely based on direct icon operations. Our GUI adopts an object-oriented approach to represent data, statistics and models as instance objects and to depict them as icons on the screen, arranged as a tree to clearly record the history of one data analysis session. When we point at an icon that represents an object we wish to manipulate, a pop-up menu, whose items are statistical procedures available for the object, appears. Selecting an appropriate procedure produces a new object and an icon on the screen to record the process of the analysis. As we can perform all statistical analyses on the tree of icons visually, by following situation-sensitive menus and using simple mouse operations, our GUI is easy to use for many novice users and is useful for preventing the trivial misuse of statistical procedures. We implemented a prototype of the proposed GUI for a time series analysis system named TISAS.