The Use of Kinematic Displays to Represent High Dimensional Data

Traditional data presentations deriving from pencil-and-paper techniques are inherently 2-dimensional, while the human visual system effortlessly deals with several more dimensions in an integrated fashion. In particular, moving pictures do impart a strong subjective 3-d effect. We describe a data manipulation and display system designed to tap this human ability for the purposes of statistical data analysis and discuss the main issues, design problems and solutions chosen. An experimental version of our system has been operating on a VAX-computer at Harvard since the fall of 1980. (A videotape illustrating some possible applications was shown at the conference.)