ShadyStats

Final ReportMike Cora

December 19, 2005

533C: Information Visualization

Background and Motivation

Spent the last year developing the high-level AI for Super Mario Strikers (decisions and positioning)

Coding, tuning and testing a video game’s AI involved gathering a lot of multidimensional statistics

Task goals for a visualization solution: Show trends, and correlations, compare teams and difficulty levels Help with finding bugs during development Help with tuning a well balanced game Aid communication with the

publisher (across potential language barriers for example)

Proposal: ShadyStats

4 – Dynamic filtering 3 – Zoomable, detailed graphs

1) Dataset history

2) Hierarchical parallel coordinates

Feature Goals

1) Maintain history of datasets for easy comparison during development lifecycle

2) Use XmdvTool1 for parallel coordinates: Hierarchical aggregation, with fancy shading Extend with interactive drag reordering of

dimensions

3) Generate detailed graphs on demand, using Zedgraph2, by interacting with the parallel coordinates component

Feature Goals 2

4) In depth, dynamic filtering and highlighting options

5) Various statistical measures (mean, variance)

6) Highly interactive, tooltip information everywhere (data values, dimension names, etc).

7) Contextual zooming of individual graphs

Demo: Parallel Coordinates

Automatic PCA clustering not applicable, needed direct control over clustering.

Hiding, reordering dimensions. Should be direct interaction with parallel coordinates control, rather than clunky button interface.

Add Side cluster, compare by dataset, difficulty, side, all data.

Highlight dataset, difficulty, side hierarchy zoom.

Zooming, panning of parallel coordinates.

** Highlite PassReceive and Possession time anomalies.

Demo: Parallel Coordinates

Demo: Graphs

Add Shots vs. Goals

Add Fouls vs. Goals vs. Sides and Difficulty (overlaying curves).

Magnify and delete graphs, naïve, quick and dirty layout, possibly use Piccolo

Highlight apparent trends.

Highlight live data linking between all views.

Built-in zooming, panning and saving features of ZedGraph.

Demo: Graphs

Demo: Filtering

Add filter Side=Home, Difficulty=Easy

Highly customizable and/or filter tree.

Everything is linked and updated dynamically.

More complex filters: dirty, high-scoring games, home/away difficulty comparison.

Demo: Filtering

Demo: Data views

All view parameters stored in one structure

Ability to save and switch between arbitrary number of views

Very easy to implement undo/redo system

Data view copy stored for each view manipulation

Unfinished/Future Work Fix bugs!!

Optimize!! (don’t use doubles, fix possible OpenGL - C# bottleneck).

Undo/Redo system based on save data views

More interactivity with the parallel coordinate control (dragging, selecting, highlighting)

Data tooltips everywhere

Coloring of parallel coordinates more meaningful, rather than automatic

Link colors between parallel coordinates and graphs more.

Unfinished/Future Work

Improve mean line, more statistical analysis

Highlighting of specific games by selecting data points in parallel coord or graphs.

Improve filtering interface, may be a bit cumbersome

Possibly use Piccolo for graph layout

Evaluation: After the hollidays, our QA Lead will evaluate the ShadyStats, apply it to

our datasets, and suggest features and improvements.

Bibliography

1) XmdvTool: http://davis.wpi.edu/~xmdv/

2) Zedgraph: http://zedgraph.sourceforge.net/

3) Edward J. Wegman. Hyperdimensional Data Analysis Using Parallel Coordinates, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 85, No. 411. (Sep., 1990), pp. 664-675.

4) Ying-Huey Fua, Matthew O. Ward, and Elke A. Rundensteiner, Hierarchical Parallel Coordinates for Visualizing Large Multivariate Data Sets, IEEE Visualization '99.

5) Jing Yang, Wei Peng, Matthew O. Ward and Elke A. Rundensteiner, Interactive Hierarchical Dimension Ordering, Spacing and Exploration of High Dimensional Datasets, Proc. InfoVis 2003.

6) John K. Ousterhout, Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, Addison Wesley,1994.