Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!whuts!spf
From: spf@whuts.UUCP (Steve Frysinger of Blue Feather Farm)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Re: Scientific visualization
Message-ID: <4511@whuts.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jul 88 14:01:44 GMT
References: <5341@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 33

> In article <11026@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>> In 1988 we have "Scientific Visualization",
>> So, any bets on what the marketeers will have in store for us in 1990?
> 
> I'll bet Douglas Adams hit the nail on the head when he predicted musical
> data representation.  It sounds like the IDEAL hype form of relation that
> means nothing to us now but could be learned if we listened to some
> huckster that was attempting to pan it off as the ultimate way to
> comprehend large data bases.

Sorry, but you hit a sore spot here.  You see, I've been doing
research in Auditory Data Representation for about 8 years, as have
a half a dozen or so friends/colleagues of mine.  While I agree that
hype is, in general, a Bad Thing, please don't vent your splein on
our work - we don't hype it, and it happens to work VERY well for some
particular types of exploratory data analysis problems (for both
normally-sighted and visually-impaired analysts).  It has been used
quite effectively in seismic and economic analysis, and its
superiority to conventional displays, for SOME types of data analysis,
has been measured by carefully designed experiments.  It just happens
that people seem to do global pattern recognition better with their ears
than with their eyes, while their eyes are better for scrutiny.

Since I didn't notice you bashing the invention commonly known as the
X-Y plot as 18th century "hype", please don't fire your flame gun when
you don't know where it's pointing.

Sorry, but as I said, you hit a sore spot, and I suspect you just fired a
salvo in my direction inadvertantly.  If you're interested, I can
provide a bibliography of Auditory Data Representation, since I'm
presently working on a review paper.

Steve Frysinger