Title
Uncertainty Visualization Influences how Humans Aggregate Discrepant Information.
Abstract
The number of sensors in our surroundings that provide the same information steadily increases. Since sensing is prone to errors, sensors may disagree. For example, a GPS-based tracker on the phone and a sensor on the bike wheel may provide discrepant estimates on traveled distance. This poses a user dilemma, namely how to reconcile the conflicting information into one estimate. We investigated whether visualizing the uncertainty associated with sensor measurements improves the quality of users' inference. We tested four visualizations with increasingly detailed representation of uncertainty. Our study repeatedly presented two sensor measurements with varying degrees of inconsistency to participants who indicated their best guess of the "true" value. We found that uncertainty information improves users' estimates, especially if sensors differ largely in their associated variability. Improvements were larger for information-rich visualizations. Based on our findings, we provide an interactive tool to select the optimal visualization for displaying conflicting information.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3173574.3174079
CHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
Uncertainty, visualization, information aggregation, conflicting information
Inference,Visualization,Computer science,Human–computer interaction,Phone,Dilemma,Information aggregation,Assisted GPS
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5620-6
2
0.38
References 
Authors
17
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Miriam Greis1384.21
aditi joshi221.73
Ken Singer320.38
Albrecht Schmidt46495696.81
Tonja Machulla5183.47