دانلود رایگان مقاله استخراج اطلاعات تجاری از نمودارها: آزمایش ردیابی چشم

abstract

Information graphics are visualizations that convey information about data trends and distributions. Data visualization and the application of graphs is increasingly important in business decision making, for instance, in big data analysis. However, relatively little information exists about how people extract information from graphs and how the framing of the graphic design defines may ‘nudge’ and bias decision making. As a contribution to fill this gap, this study applies the methodology of experimental economics to the analysis of graph reading and processing to extract underlying information. Specifically, the study presents the results of an experiment whose baseline treatment includes graphical and numerical information. The authors analyze how the information extraction changes in other treatments after removing the numerical information. The experiment applies eye-tracking technology to uncover subtle cognitive processing stages that are otherwise difficult to observe in visualization evaluation studies. The conclusions of the study establish patterns in the process of graph analysis to optimize data visualization for business and policy decision making.

5. Conclusions, limitations, and implications

Although data visualization trough basic statistical graphs is a common practice to support evidence-driven business decision making, this study shows that the extraction of relevant information from such graphs may become a difficult task even in very simple situations. Specifically, 56.7% of subjects make an error when answering a simple question, even if the information required for a proper answer is available in the statistical chart shown in the screen during the decision process. The cause of such errors is not a lack of interest in performing the tasks, which had an economic incentive, as shown by (1) the long time that those subjects providing wrong answers spend in their scanning of the graph; (2) their visualization pattern, including a detailed reading of most of the areas of interest; and (3) the long time spent looking at the remaining time to complete the task. In other words, subjects with wrong answers seem to do their best to extract the required information but are not able to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant pieces of information.