Fall 2003

Featured Publication:

A Next Step: Visualizing Errors and Uncertainty

Chris R. Johnson and Allen R. Sanderson

With few exceptions, visualization research has ignored the visual representation of errors and uncertainty for three-dimensional visualizations. This lack can be partly attributed to the inherent difficulty in defining, characterizing, and controlling comparisons between different data sets and to the corresponding error and uncertainty in the experimental, simulation, and/or visualization process. However, the main reason most two and three-dimensional visualizations of simulation and experimental data do not contain representations of error and uncertainty is that the visualization research community has not made such representations a priority. To take visualization research, and its usefulness to researchers in science, engineering, and medicine, to the next level, the visualization research community needs to make visually representing errors and uncertainties the norm rather than the exception. Fortunately, a few visualization researchers have started thinking about three-dimensional visual representations of errors and uncertainties. In this article we discuss some the previous and current approaches and present some future research directions.

Barbell glyphs showing the uncertainty between two numerical integration algorithms used for streamline calculations.

Stream tube showing the uncertainty in a particle’s path using different integration step sizes and tolerances.

[bibtex]
C.R. Johnson, A.R. Sanderson. “A Next Step: Visualizing Errors and Uncertainty,” In IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Edited by Theresa-Marie Rhyne, pp. (in press). September/October, 2003. Versions Available: [PDF]