DYNAMIC INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS PEDRO VALERO MORA UNIVERSITAT DE VALÈNCIA I HAVE WORN MANY HATS

• Degree in Psycology

• Phd on Human Computer Interaction (HCI): Formal Methods for Evaluation of Interfaces

• Teaching in the Department of Psychology since1990, Full Professor (Catedrático) in 2012

• Research interest in Statistical Graphics, Computational Statistics

• Comercial Packages (1995-) Statview, DataDesk, JMP, Systat, SPSS (of course)

• Non Comercial 1998- Programming in Lisp-Stat, contributor to ViSta (free statistical package)

• Book on Interactive Dynamic Graphics 2006 (with Forrest Young and Michael Friendly). Wiley

• Editor of two special issues of the Journal of Statistical (User interfaces for and the Health of Lisp-Stat)

• Papers, conferences, seminars, etc. DYNAMIC-INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS

• Working on this topic since mid 90s

• Other similar topics are visualization, computer graphics, etc.

• They are converging in the last few years

• I see three periods in DIG

• Special hardware

• Desktop computers

• The internet...and beyond

• This presentation will make a review of the History of DIG and will draw lessons from its evolution 1. THE SPECIAL HARDWARE PERIOD

• Tukey's Prim 9

• Tukey was not the only one, in 1988 a book summarized the experiences of many researchers on this topic

• Lesson#1: Hire a genius and give him unlimited resources, it always works

• Or not...

• Great ideas but for limited audience, not only because the cost but also the complexity… 2. DESKTOP COMPUTERS

• About 1990, the audience augments... users

• Many things only possible previously for people with deep pockets were now possible for…the price of a Mac

• Not cheap but affordable

• Several packages with a graphical user interface:

• Commercial: Statview, DataDesk, SuperANOVA (yes super), JMP, Systat…

• Non Commercial: Lisp-Stat, ViSta, XGobi, MANET... 2.1. COMMERCIAL: DATADESK

• Excellent for Exploratory Data Analysis, founded by P. F. Velleman (student of Tukey) in 1985 (still kicking)

• Linking, selecting, filtering, corkboards, models, fast,

• Teaching

• An interesting niche was teaching, companion of great textbooks on introductory statistics

• However, many people use the textbook with SPSS or other statistical packages.

• Lesson #2: Statistical analysis must be taught with the same package that will be used for real analysis

• It did not succeed although it is still in the market, but not that many people use or speaks about it.

• A mystery to me…reasons?

• Audience? Lesson #3: Think in your audience

• Presentation graphics? Static graphics? Lesson #4: Once the fun is over you need to freeze the picture 2.2.1 NON-COMMERCIAL: VISTA

• Started about 1990 by F. W. Young

• Linking, selecting filtering, spreadplots (like corkboards or dashboards) , statistics, fast...the same as DataDesk but less polished

• Excellent for Exploratory Data Analysis

• Based on XLisp-Stat 2.2.2. NON-COMMERCIAL: LISPSTAT

• Programming language for statistics based on Lisp with elements of S.

• Developed by Luke Tierney, he works currently in R

• Designed specifically for Dynamic Interactive Graphics

• Lisp-Stat was like R/S but with interactive graphics and user interface elements (buttons, lists, mouse events, windows...all native not TCL/TK or Java or Python or else)

• Lisp is great!… according to Ross Ihaka the creator of R

• It was abandoned almost by everybody about 2003

• What did it happen?: In a single letter -> R

• Why?

• Static graphics #Lesson 5: Static graphics (did not I say this before?)

• Familiarity? #Lesson 6: Make great software part of student’s education

• Community? #Lesson 7: You need a community of users and developers 3. THE INTERNET

• The impact of the internet has occurred at many levels

• Colaboration, distribution, spread, has made non-commercial collaborative products very common

• Sometimes is a problem more than a solution: many programs producing solutions for the same problem, projects discontinued, partially developed, etc.

• Delivering products in the browser so everybody can play with them easily

• I do not know much about the commercial products currently in the market (but I would love to know more…any free licenses there?)

• On the non-commercial (libre?), R is the king 3.1 R

• It is great! However, there is an area that could be improved

• Graphical User Interfaces! (Come on, it is 2016!)

• I am talking of something that my colleagues and students in Psychology could use (just copy Statview!)

• No, R-Commander is not sufficiently easy

• TBH, there are some exciting packages that go in the right direction (Shiny):

• However: A good GUI is not only that!

• Lesson #8: Hire specialists in human factors if you wish a really good GUI

• I am pessimistic about getting this right non-commercially, there are things that do not pay off academically DISCUSSION

• Evolution: DIG progressively closer to the masses

• Supporting the idea of data as a public good that anybody can use for understanding the world we live, take decisions, evaluate policies, etc.

• Current barriers steeper on the human factor than on the technical factor

• Testing: What do the people do? What do they understand?

• Education: What do the people know? How can people be taught for understanding statistics?

• Communication: Can the message still be manipulated?

• Cognition: Are human beings able to think statistically? THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION