Time-tunnel: visual analysis tool for time-series numerical data and its extension toward parallel coordinates

Abstract

Time-tunnel proposed by Akaishi et al. is a multidimensional data analysis tool. Time-tunnel visualizes any number of time series numerical data records as individual charts each of which is displayed on an individual rectangular plane called data-wing in a 3D virtual space. Through direct manipulations on a computer screen, the user easily puts more than two data-wings overlapped together to compare their charts in order to recognize the similarity or the difference among those data records. Simultaneously a radar chart among those data at any time point is displayed to recognize the similarity and the correlation among them. Since only one chart is displayed on one data-wing, so if there is a number of data records, the user has to prepare accordingly a huge number of data-wings and practically it becomes impossible to manipulate them. To deal with this problem, the authors enhanced the functionality of time-tunnel to enable it to display more than two charts on each data-wing. In other word, the authors made each data-wing have the functionality of the parallel coordinates. This paper proposes the usefulness of this enhancement of time-tunnel by showing data analysis examples.