Visualizing Time and Sequence Data

Art, or Science? Which of these is the right way to think of the field of visualization? This is not an easy question to answer, even for those who have many years experience in making graphical depictions of data with a view to help people understand it and take action. This talk will focus on techniques and principles for visualizing data that has a time or sequence component; from statistical time series through genetic sequences and music to text analysis. Unifying principles will be the focus of the talk, which will discuss appropriate representations for time/sequence data, visual encoding techniques, and methods of coordinating views that incorporate time.
Graham Wills directs visualization work at IBM. He previously worked in the Visualization Research Lab at Bell Laboratories (1992-2001) and as Visualization Architect and Principal Software Engineer at SPSS (2001-2010). He has just (2011) published a book on Visualizing Time.