Frequency plot and relevance plot to enhance visual data exploration

This paper presents two techniques aiming at exploring databases through multivariate visualizations. Both techniques intend to deal with the problem caused by the limited amount of elements that can be presented simultaneously in traditional visual exploration procedures. The first technique, the Frequency Plot, combines data frequency with interactive filtering to identify clusters and trends in subsets of the database. Thus, graphical elements (lines, pixels, icons, or graphical marks) are color differentiated proportionally to how frequent the value being represented is, while interactive filtering allows the selection of interesting partitions of the database. The second technique presented in this work, the Relevance Plot, corresponds to assigning different levels of color distinguishably to visual elements according to their relevance to a user's specified data properties set, which can be chosen visually, and dynamically.