Data2Vis : Automatic Generation of Data Visualizations Using Sequence-to-Sequence Recurrent Neural Networks

Rapidly creating effective visualizations using expressive grammars is challenging for users who have limited time and limited skills in statistics and data visualization. Even high-level, dedicated visualization tools often require users to manually select among data attributes, decide which transf...

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Veröffentlicht in:IEEE computer graphics and applications. - 1991. - 39(2019), 5 vom: 26. Sept., Seite 33-46
1. Verfasser: Dibia, Victor (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Demiralp, Cagatay
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2019
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:IEEE computer graphics and applications
Schlagworte:Journal Article
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Rapidly creating effective visualizations using expressive grammars is challenging for users who have limited time and limited skills in statistics and data visualization. Even high-level, dedicated visualization tools often require users to manually select among data attributes, decide which transformations to apply, and specify mappings between visual encoding variables and raw or transformed attributes. In this paper we introduce Data2Vis, an end-to-end trainable neural translation model for automatically generating visualizations from given datasets. We formulate visualization generation as a language translation problem, where data specifications are mapped to visualization specifications in a declarative language (Vega-Lite). To this end, we train a multilayered attention-based encoder-decoder network with long short-term memory (LSTM) units on a corpus of visualization specifications. Qualitative results show that our model learns the vocabulary and syntax for a valid visualization specification, appropriate transformations (count, bins, mean), and how to use common data selection patterns that occur within data visualizations. We introduce two metrics for evaluating the task of automated visualization generation (language syntax validity, visualization grammar syntax validity) and demonstrate the efficacy of bidirectional models with attention mechanisms for this task. Data2Vis generates visualizations that are comparable to manually created visualizations in a fraction of the time, with potential to learn more complex visualization strategies at scale
Beschreibung:Date Completed 12.09.2019
Date Revised 12.09.2019
published: Print-Electronic
Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE
ISSN:1558-1756
DOI:10.1109/MCG.2019.2924636