Data visualizations typically show a representation of a data set with little to no focus on the repeatability or generalizability of the displayed trends and patterns. However, insights gleaned from these visualizations are often used as the basis for decisions about future events. Visualizations of retrospective data therefore often serve as “visual predictive models.” However, this visual predictive model approach can lead to invalid inferences. In this article, we describe an approach to visual model validation called Inline Replication. Inline Replication is closely related to the statistical techniques of bootstrap sampling and cross-validation and, like those methods, provides a non-parametric and broadly applicable technique for assessing the variance of findings from visualizations. This article describes the overall Inline Replication process and outlines how it can be integrated into both traditional and emerging “big data” visualization pipelines. It also provides examples of how Inline Replication can be integrated into common visualization techniques such as bar charts and linear regression lines. Results from an empirical evaluation of the technique and two prototype Inline Replication–based visual analysis systems are also described. The empirical evaluation demonstrates the impact of Inline Replication under different conditions, showing that both (1) the level of partitioning and (2) the approach to aggregation have a major influence over its behavior. The results highlight the trade-offs in choosing Inline Replication parameters but suggest that using [Formula: see text] partitions is a reasonable default.
This content will become publicly available on October 13, 2025
Exploring the Capability of LLMs in Performing Low-Level Visual Analytic Tasks on SVG Data Visualizations
Data visualizations help extract insights from datasets, but reaching these insights requires decomposing high level goals into low-level analytic tasks that can be complex due to varying degrees of data literacy and visualization experience. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have shown promise for lowering barriers for users to achieve tasks such as writing code and may likewise facilitate visualization insight. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a text-based image format common in data visualizations, matches well with the text sequence processing of transformer-based LLMs. In this paper, we explore the capability of LLMs to perform 10 low-level visual analytic tasks defined by Amar, Eagan, and Stasko directly on SVG-based visualizations. Using zero-shot prompts, we instruct the models to provide responses or modify the SVG code based on given visualizations. Our findings demonstrate that LLMs can effectively modify existing SVG visualizations for some tasks like Cluster but perform poorly on tasks requiring mathematical operations like Compute Derived Value. We also discovered that LLM performance can vary based on factors such as the number of data points, the presence of value labels, and the chart type. Our findings contribute to gauging the general capabilities of LLMs and highlight the need for further exploration and development to fully harness their potential in supporting visual analytic tasks.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2311574
- PAR ID:
- 10533379
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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