Ranking Visualizations of Correlation Using Weber's Law
Abstract
Despite years of research yielding systems and guidelines to aid visualization design, practitioners still face the challenge of identifying the best visualization for a given dataset and task. One promising approach to circumvent this problem is to leverage perceptual laws to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of a visualization design. Following previously established methodologies, we conduct a large scale (n=1687) crowdsourced experiment to investigate whether the perception of correlation in nine commonly used visualizations can be modeled using Weber's law. The results of this experiment contribute to our understanding of information visualization by establishing that: (1) for all tested visualizations, the precision of correlation judgment could be modeled by Weber's law, (2) correlation judgment precision showed striking variation between negatively and positively correlated data, and (3) Weber models provide a concise means to quantify, compare, and rank the perceptual precision afforded by a visualization.
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- Authors
- Harrison, L., Yang, F., Franconeri, S., & Chang, R.
- Affiliations
- Tufts University (US)
- Northwestern University (US)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
- Published
- 2014-12-31
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1943-1952
- ISSN
- 1077-2626 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2043523210
- Cited by
- 212
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 13.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- NSF (IIS-1218170)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Data Visualization and Analytics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- correlation visualization, Weber's law, perceptual precision, perceptual models, negative correlation, positive correlation, crowdsourced experiments
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