Clustrophile: A Tool for Visual Clustering Analysis

TL;DR

Clustrophile is an interactive visualization tool designed to facilitate quick, iterative clustering analysis, aiding data exploration and hypothesis generation through combined visualizations and novel interaction techniques.

Contribution

It introduces Clustrophile, a novel tool integrating multiple visualizations and interaction techniques for enhanced clustering analysis and reasoning.

Findings

Enables rapid exploration of clustering parameters.

Supports reasoning about data in relation to dimensions.

Facilitates hypothesis generation through visual analysis.

Abstract

While clustering is one of the most popular methods for data mining, analysts lack adequate tools for quick, iterative clustering analysis, which is essential for hypothesis generation and data reasoning. We introduce Clustrophile, an interactive tool for iteratively computing discrete and continuous data clusters, rapidly exploring different choices of clustering parameters, and reasoning about clustering instances in relation to data dimensions. Clustrophile combines three basic visualizations -- a table of raw datasets, a scatter plot of planar projections, and a matrix diagram (heatmap) of discrete clusterings -- through interaction and intermediate visual encoding. Clustrophile also contributes two spatial interaction techniques, $\textit{forward projection}$ and $\textit{backward projection}$, and a visualization method, $\textit{prolines}$, for reasoning about two-dimensional projections obtained through dimensionality reductions.