Visualization Support for User-Centered Model Selection in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

The problem of model selection in knowledge discovery and data mining—the selection of appropriate discovered patterns/models or algorithms to achieve such patterns/models—is generally a difficult task for the user as it requires meta-knowledge on algorithms/models and model performance metrics. Viewing knowledge discovery as a human-centered process that requires an effective collaboration between the user and the discovery system, our work aims to make model selection in knowledge discovery easier and more effective. For such a collaboration, our solution is to give the user the ability to try easily various alternatives and to compare competing models quantitatively and qualitatively. The basic idea of our solution is to integrate data and knowledge visualization with the knowledge discovery process in order to the support the participation of the user. We introduce the knowledge discovery system D2MS in which several visualization techniques of data and knowledge are developed and integrated into the steps of the knowledge discovery process. The visualizers in D2MS greatly help the user gain better insight in each step of the knowledge discovery process as well the relationship between data and discovered knowledge in the whole process.