Date Approved

12-31-2008

Embargo Period

3-23-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. in Engineering

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

College

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering

Advisor

Rusu, Adrian

Subject(s)

Algorithms; Information visualization

Disciplines

Computer Sciences | Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

Information visualization produces (interactive) visual representations of abstract data to reinforce human cognition and perception; thus enabling the viewer to gain knowledge about the internal structure of the data and causal relationships in it. The visualization of information hierarchies is concerned with the presentation of abstract hierarchical information about relationships between various entities. It has many applications in diverse domains such as software engineering, information systems, biology, and chemistry. Information hierarchies are typically modeled by an abstract tree, where vertices are entities and edges represent relationships between entities. The aim of visualizing tree drawings is to automatically produce drawings of trees which clearly reflect the relationships of the information hierarchy.

This thesis is primarily concerned with introducing the new general tree drawing algorithm Quad that produces good visually distinguishable angles, and a characterization of general trees which allows us to classify general trees into several types based on their characteristics. Both of these topics are part of building an experimental study environment for the evaluation of drawing algorithms for general trees.

The main achievements of this thesis include:

1. A study on characterization of general trees that aims to classify them into several types.

2. A tree drawing algorithm that produces visually distinguishable angles for high degree general trees with user specified angular coefficient.

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