Visualization in the Service of Understanding

[Graham Durant-Law]

Now here's an interesting challenge. The editorial board of the Journal of Social Structure has announced the first annual symposium on network visualization. The theme is "Visualization in the Service of Understanding". The board is challenging network researchers and practitioners to produce a single figure and caption that tells a compelling scientific story in a way that tables or text alone could not. I'm always trying to do this and call the resultant visualizations SOILS . A SOIL is a senior officer interest light, which goes on when they are attracted to a diagram, graph, map or picture. The SOILS Syndrome is a propensity to privilege these visualisations over other forms of knowledge, often at the expense of proper understanding, but I digress. ...

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