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Visual representation of data
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Sep 2, 2010 at 03:51 AM
Can’t help but comment when I see references to Connected Text that when I tried it out last time I found the help files unintelligible, and a vid made by a prof on how to use CT for references and research, which looked like it might be helpful, was a big disappointment. I wrote the company, and as far as I recollect, never got a reply. Guess they don’t need me or others who can’t comprehend as well as they do.
Programs like CT - and even UltraRecall - forfeit market share with help materials that are not intelligible to guys like me. Just because I can’t understand a program’s instructions doesn’t mean I don’t need and would be willing to pay for what the program does.
There used to be a time when technical writers were valued - and there was a reason for it.
Anyhow, that’s my tangent to the topic.
Daly
Posted by quant
Sep 2, 2010 at 08:39 AM
Agree, one can do a lot on plane, problem is there aren’t many tools that show more than a tree. This “visualization tool” would take it completely to another level.
In the video they show that one can enforce planar 2d map, it was great how 3d map changed to 2d. It might be that one is getting lost in 2d and can move to 3d, it could help to provide the “aha moment” ;-)
Manfred wrote:
>I agree that a tree cannot deal with this. You need a more flexible data
>structure. But it is possible to do a lot on a plane. One does not necessarily need 3 D,
>unless one wants to go to higher levels of complexity than two or three levels deep. (It
>seems to me that if computer screens were larger, even a depth of four or five levels
>would make sense without 3 D.
>
>Manfred
Posted by Manfred
Sep 2, 2010 at 12:53 PM
“I found the help files unintelligible,” ...
I understand that help files are important, even though I also know that most of us read them only as a last resort. To reject an application just because the help files are not quite adequate seems to me to put the cart before the horse, anyway. Furthermore, there are a lot of “promising” applications discussed here that don’t have any help files at all.
The Company that develops ConnectedText is based in Brazil. I am sure they have very competent technical writers in Portuguese. That being said, “unintelligible” is certainly an unwarranted exaggeration.
For what it’s worth, ConnectedText is the **only** application that makes **me** stick with Windows.
Anybody is, of course, entitled to their own opinion as to the quality of a program?especially if they know next to nothing about it.
Daly, this will be my last post in this forum so you won’t have to be annoyed with my comments or posts any longer. I don’t need this ...
From one Canadian to another,
Manfred
Posted by Tom S.
Sep 2, 2010 at 03:43 PM
quant wrote:
>I think it’s not just the amount of data, it’s the “data with relationships” that it
>could display efficiently.
>Once you start to have multiple parents and links
>between “far” items, it’s impossible to display it in tree structure.
>Also programs
>like the brain, connectd text, mind raider have problem with that, because it’s in
>plane.
Your comments remind me of a story. When I was a graduate student I was putting together some data and presented my advisor with a graph that represented a 3 dimensional relationship. He said he ‘d always wanted to publish a graph like that. It was a very compact graph with a lot of information about the relationships involved. The problem was that no one could focus enough on any one of the relationships on the plot to be able to define the position of each point with the precision we required. In the end, we went with two 2D graphs to represent the data.
The need to evaluate the relationships in this program isn’t for anything quite as precise. But I was really overwhelmed with what I saw on the screen and I’m thinking it would be too easy to get lost in it and too difficult to focus on any one relationship.
Could be wrong.
Tom S.
Posted by quant
Sep 2, 2010 at 04:38 PM
you’re probably right, and I’m too optimistic about this 3d. we can only speculate now.
The small difference from your situation is that you had static 3d map showing it only from single view. Say if I couldn’t make head and tail out of what I saw, I could try to rotate it, in whatever direction, or flatten it to 2d, or try different layout. maybe it would help, maybe not.
It might be also that we are simply not used to see info with all the relationship in 3d, or maybe it’s just too much for our brains to grasp it.
But I’d really love to give it a goooood try :)
Tom S. wrote:
>
>
>quant wrote:
>>I think it’s not just the amount of data, it’s the “data with
>relationships” that it
>>could display efficiently.
>>Once you start to have
>multiple parents and links
>>between “far” items, it’s impossible to display it in
>tree structure.
>>Also programs
>>like the brain, connectd text, mind raider have
>problem with that, because it’s in
>>plane.
>
>Your comments remind me of a story. When
>I was a graduate student I was putting together some data and presented my advisor with
>a graph that represented a 3 dimensional relationship. He said he ‘d always wanted to
>publish a graph like that. It was a very compact graph with a lot of information about
>the relationships involved. The problem was that no one could focus enough on any one
>of the relationships on the plot to be able to define the position of each point with the
>precision we required. In the end, we went with two 2D graphs to represent the
>data.
>
>The need to evaluate the relationships in this program isn’t for anything
>quite as precise. But I was really overwhelmed with what I saw on the screen and I’m
>thinking it would be too easy to get lost in it and too difficult to focus on any one
>relationship.
>
>Could be wrong.
>
>Tom S.