Lin-spiration: using a mixture of spiral and linear visualization layouts to explore time series.

ABSTRACTTime series data is pervasive in many domains and interactive visualization of such data is useful for a wide range of tasks including analysis and prediction. In spite of the importance of visualizing time series data and the fact that time series data is often easily interpretable, traditional approaches are either very simple and limited, or are aimed at domain experts. In this paper, we propose a novel interactive visualization paradigm for exploring and comparing multiple sets of time series data. In particular, we propose a focus+context approach, where a "focus" segment of a time series is zoomed into and visualized using a linear layout at one scale, while the remaining segments of the time series (i.e., the context) are visualized using spiral data layouts. Our paradigm allows the user to dynamically select and compare different sections of each time series independently, facilitating the exploration of time series data in a fun and engaging way.