Information and scientific visualization: separate but equal or happy together at last

Abstract

Must we continue to define a difference between information and scientific visualization? Scientific visualization evolved first in the late 1980’s while information visualization matured in the mid-1990’s. Scientific visualization is frequently considered to focus on the visual display of spatial data associated with scientific processes such as the bonding of molecules in computational chemistry. Information visualization examines developing visual metaphors for non-inherently spatial data such as the exploration of text-based document databases. This panel examines the effective, productive, and perhaps confusing tension between these subfields of visualization by highlighting the following issues: