Concentric set schematization

Sets can be visualized in various ways and settings. An important distinction between techniques is based on whether the elements have a spatial location that is to be used for the visualization; for example, the elements are cities on a map. Strictly adhering to such location may severely limit the visualization and force overlay, intersections and other forms of clutter. On the other hand, completely ignoring the spatial dimension omits information and may hide spatial patterns in the data. In this abstract, we present ongoing research on a method that is in between spatial and nonspatial visualizations. The main idea is to schematize (move) the spatial locations onto concentric circles, to improve the visualization of the set system while roughly maintaining spatial structure.