I would like to remind members of the list of a meeting 
about Visualisation of Complex Data Sets
organised by the General Applications Section of the
Royal Statisticial Society that will take place on

Wednesday 17th May

at the RSS Headquarters, Errol Street, London

2pm to 5pm  (Tea at 3:30pm approximately)

The abstracts of the talks are below.

Thank you very much.

Julian Stander
GAS Secretary


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Visualisation of Complex Data Sets


ANTONY UNWIN (Institut für Mathematik, Universität Augsburg, Germany)

Exploring Complex Datasets Graphically with Multiple Views and Interaction

Each complex dataset has to be visualised in different ways, so what is 
there that can be said that applies to all?  
One strategy is to develop complex graphics to match the complex 
datasets.  
Graphical displays need to be flexible and interlinked to reveal the broad 
range of information that can be found in a dataset. 
This presentation discusses interactive graphic tools mixing basic 
displays like histograms and scatterplots with more sophisticated 
multivariate displays like parallel coordinate plots and mosaic plots.  


CHRISTIAN HENNIG (Department of Statistical Science, University College 
London)

Asymmetric projection methods in clustering and classification

We discuss linear dimension reduction for data sets which are partitioned 
into some known classes in order to separate the 
classes as well as possible. The main idea is asymmetric dimension 
reduction, 
i.e. one group is declared as the “homogeneous” group, which should 
appear “packed” in the resulting projection, 
while the all other groups should appear separated, though not necessarily 
homogeneously, from the homogeneous group. 
We will present several version of asymmetry, including some robust 
against several types of outliers and 
aggregate local information about separation.



PAUL LONGLEY (Department of Geography, University College London)

The quantitative analysis of family names - a contribution to spatial 
literacy?

A recent research project has investigated the distribution of surnames in 
Great Britain, 
both current and historic, in order to understand patterns of regional 
economic development, population movement and cultural identity. 
This presentation describes the trajectory of interest in the project and 
identifies some tentative issues for the 
geographic representation of family genealogy. 


Tea


FIONN MURTAGH (Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University 
of London)

Identifying and exploiting ultrametricity

We begin with pervasive ultrametricity due to high dimensionality and/or 
spatial sparsity.  
How extent or degree of ultrametricity can be quantified leads us to the 
discussion of varied practical cases when 
ultrametricity can be partially or locally present in data.  We show how 
the ultrametricity can be assessed in text or 
document collections, in time series signals, and in chemical information 
retrieval.  
We conclude with a discussion of ultrametricity in astrophysics, relating 
to observational cosmology.


SVEN KNUDSEN (Insightful, Ltd)

Statistical Visualisations of Data in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Endless listings and complex tables has been the de-facto standard for 
reporting clinical results.  
However, recent focus on patient safety has increased both the amount of 
data and complexity.  
At the same time, reduced budgets are forcing efficiency with which trial 
resources are deployed.  
As a consequence, both governmental control and the pharmaceutical 
industry are starting to embrace 
statistical graphs as the process to clear informative realisations of 
results and raw data.  
This can have several benefits but also surprising consequences, depending 
on the stage of the 
drug development process.  In this talk we focus on the usage of graphs in 
the pharmaceutical industry, 
in particular what should be included and avoided in a strict regulated 
environment.  
Examples will be a considerable part of the talk, in particular on single 
patient profiles and adverse event review.

Meeting Contact: Dr Mario Cortina-Borja [log in to unmask]