We closed this forum 18 June 2010. It has served us well since 2005 as the ALPHA forum did before it from 2002 to 2005. New discussions are ongoing at the new URL http://forum.processing.org. You'll need to sign up and get a new user account. We're sorry about that inconvenience, but we think it's better in the long run. The content on this forum will remain online.
Index › Programming Questions & Help › Programs › Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
‹ Previous Topic | Next Topic ›
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Visualizing Relatedness of many entities (Read 904 times)
ahattemer
Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
May 21st, 2008, 12:00am  
I have a set of data that can be described as a matrix of the "relatedness" of many terms.

For Example:
........Term1.....Term2.....Term3
Term1....X..........2.........3
Term2....2..........X.........5
Term3....3..........5.........X

I want to figure out a way to visually display these terms, in a sort of "Clustering MAp" (think Google's Social Graph).

I feel like there has to be some well established precedents (processing or non-processing), but I dont know what this type of visualization is called, so I havent been able to find good data on it.

Any Input/Insight?

Thanks!!
Andy
Back to top
« Last Edit: May 21st, 2008, 5:34pm by ahattemer »  
WWW  
PhiLho 
Re: Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
Reply #1 - May 21st, 2008, 8:12am  
Is that a weighted graph? Are the numbers in the table a weight?
I recently worked on a challenge involving such graph, the goal being to search the minimal spawning tree, ie. the shortest (lightest) tree (non-closed of course) connecting all nodes. There are several algorithms for that, like Prim's or Kruskal's one.
If you search these terms (eg. Prim algorithm on Wikipedia, it will give nice explanations and links, one to a Java applet showing graphically such graph: all the nodes are in a circle and lines go from nodes to the related ones.
For the mentioned challenge, I might solve such algorithm with Processing, for the nice display/animation it can offer.
Back to top
 
WWW  
ahattemer
Re: Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
Reply #2 - May 21st, 2008, 5:34pm  
I want to make a network diagram like this: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/page/Network_Diagram.html

except each relationship has to be quantified. Just saying two items have a relationship is not enough.

So from my crappy matrix example in the first post, Term 1 would have to be two units from Term 2, and three Units from Term 3
Back to top
« Last Edit: May 21st, 2008, 7:18pm by ahattemer »  
WWW  
antiplastik
Re: Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
Reply #3 - May 21st, 2008, 11:13pm  
If I were you, I would give it a try with traer's physics library and some particle system :

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/%7Etraer/physics/

You can add some particles (items), springs between them (relationship) and adjust each spring's size (quantified relationship). And if needed, you can easily retrieve each spring's or particle's position to add some text.
Back to top
 
WWW  
PhiLho 
Re: Visualizing Relatedness of many entities
Reply #4 - May 22nd, 2008, 12:49am  
Yes, the challenge I mentioned was about network, the goal was to optimize the length of the connections.
Something like what you show is a bit more complex, as nodes seem to have been placed so there is little crossing of lines. Such algorithms have been developed, among others, in Graphviz.
Back to top
 
WWW  
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
‹ Previous Topic | Next Topic ›