Description:

Today, “Big Data” is discussed everywhere, among IT professionals as well as in popular news media. Many hopes and fears are associated with the topic. However, both the potential and the danger of big data applications might often be misjudged. One reason could be that big data is invisible – it is just too big to be studied in a simple table or text format. As a first step, visual representations could help to make larger amounts of data readable. But only sophisticated visual analytics systems integrating database technology, data analysis and mining algorithms, and state-of-the-art visualizations promise to really increase the understanding of big data scenarios. We need an interplay of technologies to leverage big data.

In this seminar, we want to study such applications of visual analytics for big data scenarios. We will discuss those applications along the following aspects:

1. How is the data stored (database technology)?

2. How is the data processed (statistics and data mining)?

3. How is the data visualized in an interactive system (visualization and interaction)?

According to the type of data, different approaches are necessary. We plan to cover a variety of data types such as graph/network data, multi-dimensional data, time-varying data, or spatial/geographical data.

Detailed information on the seminar outline will be announced at the first meeting, Oct 12. As part of the first session, we will also introduce available topics and assign them according to your preferences. You are, or course, also invited to attend the first meeting even if you have not yet finally decided if you want to take the course.

The teaching and working language of the seminar will be English.