1 The seminal works on hierarchy are “The Architecture of Complexity,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1962, vol. 106, p. 467–482; and The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1969, both by Herbert A. Simon.
2 Note that stair hierarchies in software are often referred to as tree hierarchies.
3 Representing these structures in three-dimensional space improves little in terms of clarity and comprehensibility—though it does result in some fascinating structures to view and navigate. See, for example, “Cone Trees: Animated 3D Visualizations of Hierarchical Information” by George G. Robertson, Jock D. Mackinlay, Stuart K. Card, Proceedings of CHI ’91: Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1991, p. 189–194.
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