iPlots eXtreme: Next Generation of Interactive Graphics for Analysis of Large Data

• Activity Number: 446
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Graphics
• Author(s): Simon Urbanek*+
• Companies: AT&T Labs - Research
• Keywords: visualization ; interactive graphics ; statistical computing ; R

Abstract

Interactive graphics provide a very important tool in real-world applied statistics. However, existing solutions are often not scalable to large data amounts that we encounter today. In this talk we present a new interactive graphics system, iPlots eXtreme, that was designed specifically to address issues of scalability and flexibility in prototyping new visual methods. It leverages the power of modern hardware via OpenGL for interactive visualization and is aggressively optimized. It also embeds seamlessly into the R system for statistical computing to provide extensibility, ease of use in analytical workflow and prototyping for new plots. We will show the system design, highlight the key advances and illustrate its scalability and use on several practical examples. We will also showcase its extensibility in conjunction with R and its role as a very fast interactive graphics system.