Penta: Towards Visualizing Compound Graphs as Set-Typed Data

Abstract

Compound graphs are graphs whose nodes, in addition to topological connections, share group-level relationships. The need to incorporate both topological and group-level relationships makes them inherently challenging to visualize, especially for large data. We present Penta, a prototypical dashboard that, by combining elements of compound graph and set visualization, provides a complete view of both types of relationships. To this end, we employ five linked views that provide insight into a compound graph’s i) global and set local topology using both hypernode and traditional node-link diagrams, respectively, ii) set and entity-level relationship and identity using similarity matrices linked by a bipartite node-link diagram, as well as iii) node-centric topology across sets visualized as a layered node-link diagram. We demonstrate the workflow and advantages of Penta in three small-scale case studies, using character co-occurrence networks as well as biochemical pathway data. While still a prototype, the proposed dashboard shows promise in facilitating a complete visual exploration of the topology and group-level relationships present in compound graphs, simultaneously.