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Self-Illustrating Phenomena
Pat Hanrahan (Stanford University)
A self-illustrating phenomenon is an image which exposes the science behind it.
(I first saw this term in H. Robin's book, "The Scientific Image"). Some famous
examples are pictures of iron filings aligned along magnetic lines of force,
sand particles collecting at the stationary points of the standing waves of a
violin, stress in a mechanical part revealed through birefringence, and particle
tracks in a bubble chamber. Such images brilliantly combine experimental design,
analysis, and visualization. Quoting J. Tukey, "the general purposes of conducting
experiments and analyzing data match, point by point." I will argue in this talk
that computer tools for visual analysis should normally be conceived of as aids
in constructing computational visual experiments; and that the resulting visualizations
be consciously designed to help validate or invalidate the hypothesis being tested
by the experiment. |
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