Mondrian (software)

Mondrian

Developer	Martin Theus
Stable release	1.2 (January 11, 2011)
OS	Windows, Macintosh, Linux
Website	http://www.rosuda.org/Mondrian

Mondrian is a general-purpose statistical data-visualization system. It features outstanding visualization techniques for data of almost any kind, and has its particular strength compared to other tools when working with Categorical Data, Geographical Data and LARGE Data. All plots in Mondrian are fully linked, and offer various interactions and queries. Any case selected in a plot in Mondrian is highlighted in all other plots.

Currently implemented plots comprise Mosaic Plot, Scatterplots and SPLOM, Maps, Barcharts, Histograms, Missing Value Plot, Parallel Coordinates/Boxplots and Boxplots y by x.

Mondrian works with data in standard tab-delimited or comma-separated ASCII files and can load data from R workspaces. There is basic support for working directly on data in databases.

Mondrian links to R and offers statistical procedures like interactive density estimation, scatterplot smoothers, multidimensional scaling (MDS) and principal component analysis (PCA).

Overview

Starting in 1997, Mondrian was first developed with a focus on visualization techniques for categorical data and enhanced selection techniques. Over the years, a complete suite of visualizations for univariate and multivariate data measured on any scale were added. The link to R offers well tested statistical procedures, which integrate seamlessly into the interactive graphics. Today, even geographical data is supported with highly interactive maps.

Mondrian details

Supported data sources

Mondrian works on plain text files with tab-separated columns with variable header, as exported from Microsoft Excel as ".txt". If the Rserve link and R are present, Mondrian also reads data directly from R workspace files (.RData files).

Visualizations

• 1-d: Barchart, Spineplot, Histogram, Spinogram, Boxplot
• 2-d: Scatterplot, Boxplot y by x
• High-D:
  • Multivariate continuous: Scatterplot matrix, Parallel coordinates
  • Multivariate categorical: Mosaic plot (see also Treemapping)
• Geographical: Map
• Special: missing value plot

Interaction techniques

• Query
• Select
• Modifiy

Further reading

• Theus, M. (2002). Interactive Data Visualization using Mondrian, in Journal of Statistical Software 7 (11): 1–9.
• Theus, M. and Urbanek, S. (2008). Interactive Graphics for Data Analysis: Principles and Examples (Computer Science and Data Analysis), Chapman & Hall / CRC.

See also

• Data visualization
• GGobi

External links

• Mondrian: Graphical Data Analysis Software
• Homepage for the book “Interactive Graphics for Data Analysis – Principles and Examples” - the book is heavily based on Mondrian
• theusrus - the homepage of Martin Theus