Development of Visual Programming Environment for Exploratory Data Analysis

在计算机科学中，“可视化”是最吸引人的关键词之一。“可视化”不仅对揭示数据有用，而且对处理分析过程也很有用。统计学家经常被迫在他们的分析中对同一数据应用多种方法，因为他们想找到最合理的结果。然而，他们取得的许多结果可能会让他们感到困惑。如果他们可以在图形显示上查看分析流程(由一些统计方法组成)，他们就可以很容易地找到数据和应用方法之间的关系。这就是“执行的可视化”。正如我们所描述的，“可视化”有很大的力量，那么我们就试图构建“可视化环境”，它综合了“可视化”的优点。简而言之，我们的目标是建立一个能够查看、显示数据、构造分析流程并在同一环境中执行的系统。在该系统中，如果可以在一个分析流程中添加和执行一些统计方法，就可以很容易地对原始数据或中间数据进行某些方法的更改或应用另一个过程。我们已经开发了原型，现在正在TCL/TK环境下对其进行改进，以实现其互操作性。此外，这种想法对统计学新手来说也是有效的，但他们对统计知识了解较少，可能会造成无意义的统计流程。我们已经认识到了这一问题，并尝试增加一个利用知识工程技术的支持模块，特别是在研究项目的过程中，我们对可视化编程环境的硬件/软件进行了研究，并讨论了该环境实际使用的关键问题

In computer science, "Visualization" is one of the most attractive keywords. "Visualization" is useful not only to reveal data but to deal with analysis processes. Statisticians are often forced to apply many methods to the same data in their analysis since they wants to find the most reasonable result. A lot of results they made, however, may perplex them. If they can view an analysis flow (made of some statistical methods) on the graphical display, they can easily find the relations between data and applied methods. It is called "Visualization of Execution."As we described, "Visualization" has much power then we try to build "Visual Environment, " which synthesizes both "Visualization" merits. In short, our target is to build the system which can view, display data and construct analysis flows and execute them in the sameenvironment. In the system, if we can add and execute some statistical methods in an analysis flow, we can easily change some methods or apply another procedure to the original data or intermediate ones.We had already developed the prototypes and now improve it on the workstation with Tcl/Tk environment for its interoperability. In addition, this idea is also effective for novices in statistics but they have less knowledge on statistics then may make a meaningless statistical flow. We have already recognized this problem and tried to add a supporting module which makes use of technique on knowledge engineering.Especially, in the process of the research project, we have investigated the hard/software for the visual programming environment and have discussed the critical issues for the practical use of the environment