Spatial Coordination Games for Large-Scale Visualization

Andre Ribeiro, Eiko Yoneki

Abstract: Dimensionality reduction (‘visualization’) is a central problem in statistics. Several of the most popular solutions grew out of interaction metaphors (springs, boids, neurons, etc.) We show that the problem can be framed as a game of coordination and solved with standard game-theoretic concepts. Nodes that are close in a (high-dimensional) graph must coordinate in a (low-dimensional) screen position. We derive a game solution, a GPU-parallel implementation and report visualization experiments in several datasets. The solution is a very practical application of game-theory in an important problem, with fast and low-stress embeddings.