Visualization Analysis and Design

Chapter 13

Reduce Items and Attributes

13.1 The Big Picture

Figure 13.1 shows the set of design choices for reducing—or increasing—what is shown at once within a view. Filtering simply eliminates elements, whereas aggregation combines many together. Either choice can be applied to both items or attributes.

Figure 13.1.

Design choices for reducing (or increasing) the amount of data items and attributes to show.

13.2 Why Reduce?

Reduction is one of five major strategies for managing complexity in visualizations; as pointed out before, these five choices are not mutually exclusive, and various combinations of them are common.

Typically, static ...