An Introduction to Visualization and Data Analysis: Advanced Software for the '90s

Scientific and technical software developers have been in search of a computer program that would revolutionize the way scientific and technical professionals do their jobs and use computers. Many scientific and technical professionals who use Visual Data Analysis (VDA) -- software that lets you see your data and your graphically instead of, or in addition to, numerically-say it is changing the way they do science. Of course, predicting future technological progress is notoriously difficult - especially for scientific software. This is not just because tomorrow will bring applications and algorithms yet to be written, but also because applications that already exist are probably going to be more important than one thinks.

Today's science and R & D professionals generate huge amounts of data in lots of different formats, the abundance of both stretches the imagination. The resulting volumes of data can no longer be analyzed by conventional techniques - who can make heads or tails of reams of statistics describing a process or problem? What we engineers and scientists need are tools to reduce tens, hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data into a format that can be easily processed by our only-human brains. That's why more and more scientists and engineers are turning toward VDA tools.

Only a few years ago, visualization programs were limited to the graphical representation of data as their primary technique: little importance was given to data analysis. In a similar vein, numerical analysis software lacked interactive graphics and graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Today, most numerical analysis programs have GUIs and graphics. And many visualization products have added strong analytical capabilities, leading to a blurring in the marketplace and many confusing choices for buyers.

VDA is a multi-dimensional form, synonymous to some with interactive graphics. For others, VDA is a new way to do data analysis. Regardless of how one starts using VDA software - or why - users unanimously agree, it will accelerate the analysis and discovery process. Whether one thinks increasing productivity means getting faster results or getting better results, VDA software enables users to dedicate less time to data management and more time to analysis and discovery. VDA has changed the data analysis process into an interactive experience whereby the analyst is able to interact, select, subset, interpret and display some or all of the data at any time. "Once you understand the physical components of bouncing sound through someone's body and generating an image from that, everything you do after that is nothing more than standard image processing", says Dr. Roger A. Pierson, director of Reproductive Biology Research at the University of Saskatchewan. "It's what you interpret from the results of your studies that's important, and that's what HTPV-Wave {a leading VDA program} has given us: a new way to interpret our data and better ways to manipulate it."

True VDA products are characterized by data presentation tools to graphically analyze data, support for large multi-dimensional data sets a high degree of interactivity, tools for fast data access, subsetting and output, numeric and statistical analysis tools, and graphics, imaging, tabulating and animation tools for data display.

The best VDA products add a programmable language or macro capability to enable the automation of repetitive tasks and for developers to build complete applications for end users. The best VDA products also have excellent, flexible presentation graphics to enable the user to present the findings with traditional analytical graphics.

Who's using Visualization and Data Analysis Tools

More and more scientists, engineers and researchers in almost every field from astronomy to zoology are using visual data analysis tools and techniques. For example,

Oil and Gas: Geologists are using Spyglass Transform from Spyglass Inc. to model oil reservoirs in a fraction of the time required when using traditional graphics.

Transportation: Mechanical, civil and industrial engineers are using PV-Wave from Visual Numerics, Inc. to design new rail car technology.

Medical Research: Medical Researchers are using is using DADiSP from DSP Development to analyze DNA data.

Manufacturing: Quality Control engineers are using Pirouette from InfoMetrix to evaluate assembly line motors and to schedule maintenance.

Electronics: Electronics engineers are using BBN/Cornerstone from BBN Inc. to predict yields of printed circuit board production lines.

Astrophysics: Scientists at Lockheed's Solar and Astrophysics lab are using IDL from Research Systems Inc. to analyze satellite data and the sun's magnetic field.

Biomedicine: Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health are using VoxelView from Visual Images to study the structural components within cells.

Telecommunications: Network Engineers are using MacPhase by Otter Solutions to visually slice through terrain maps to locate microwave repeaters that require direct line of sight between them. 


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