Treemapping

In information visualization and computing, treemapping is a

method for displaying hierarchical data using nested figures, usually
rectangles.

Treemaps display hierarchical (tree-structured) data as a set of

nested rectangles. Each branch of the tree is given a rectangle,
which is then tiled with smaller rectangles representing sub-
branches. A leaf node's rectangle has an area proportional to a
specified dimension of the data.[1] Often the leaf nodes are colored
to show a separate dimension of the data.
Treemap of Singapore's exports by
When the color and size dimensions are correlated in some way product category, 2012. The Product
with the tree structure, one can often easily see patterns that would Exports Treemaps are one of the
be difficult to spot in other ways, such as whether a certain color is most recent applications of these
particularly relevant. A second advantage of treemaps is that, by kind of visualizations, developed by
construction, they make efficient use of space. As a result, they can the Harvard-MIT Observatory of
Economic Complexity.
legibly display thousands of items on the screen simultaneously.

Tiling algorithms
To create a treemap, one must define a tiling algorithm, that is, a way to divide a region into sub-regions of
specified areas. Ideally, a treemap algorithm would create regions that satisfy the following criteria:

1. A small aspect ratio—ideally close to one. Regions with a small aspect ratio (i.e, fat objects)
are easier to perceive.[2]
2. Preserve some sense of the ordering in the input data (ordered).
3. Change to reflect changes in the underlying data (high stability).

Unfortunately, these properties have an inverse relationship. As the aspect ratio is optimized, the order of
placement becomes less predictable. As the order becomes more stable, the aspect ratio is degraded.

Rectangular treemaps

To date, fifteen primary rectangular treemap algorithms have been developed:

 Treemap algorithms[3]
Algorithm Order Aspect ratios Stability
BinaryTree partially ordered high stable

Slice And Dice[4] ordered very high stable

Strip[5] ordered medium medium stability

Pivot by middle[6] ordered medium medium stability

Pivot by split[7] ordered medium low stability

Pivot by size[8] ordered medium medium stability

Split[9] ordered medium medium stability

Spiral[10] ordered medium medium stability

Hilbert[11] ordered medium medium stability

Moore[12] ordered medium medium stability

Squarified[13] ordered low low stability

Mixed Treemaps[14] unordered low medium stability

Approximation[15] unordered low medium stability

Git[16] unordered medium stable

Local moves[17] unordered medium stable

Convex treemaps

Rectangular treemaps have the disadvantage that their aspect ratio might be arbitrarily high in the worst
case. As a simple example, if the tree root has only two children, one with weight and one with weight
, then the aspect ratio of the smaller child will be , which can be arbitrarily high. To cope with
this problem, several algorithms have been proposed that use regions that are general convex polygons, not
necessarily rectangular.

Convex treemaps were developed in several steps, each step improved the upper bound on the aspect
ratio. The bounds are given as a function of - the total number of nodes in the tree, and - the total depth
of the tree.

1. Onak and Sidiropoulos[18] proved an upper bound of .

2. De-Berg and Onak and Sidiropoulos[19] improve the upper bound to , and
prove a lower bound of .
3. De-Berg and Speckmann and van-der-Weele[20] improve the upper bound to ,
matching the theoretical lower bound. (For the special case where the depth is 1, they
present an algorithm that uses only four classes of 45-degree-polygons (rectangles, right-
angled triangles, right-angled trapezoids and 45-degree pentagons), and guarantees an
aspect ratio of at most 34/7.)

The latter two algorithms operate in two steps (greatly simplified for clarity):
 1. The original tree is converted to a binary tree: each node with more than two children is
replaced by a sub-tree in which each node has exactly two children.
2. Each region representing a node (starting from the root) is divided to two, using a line that
keeps the angles between edges as large as possible. It is possible to prove that, if all
edges of a convex polygon are separated by an angle of at least , then its aspect ratio is
. It is possible to ensure that, in a tree of depth , the angle is divided by a factor of at
most , hence the aspect ratio guarantee.

Orthoconvex treemaps

In convex treemaps, the aspect ratio cannot be constant - it grows with the depth of the tree. To attain a
constant aspect-ratio, Orthoconvex treemaps[20] can be used. There, all regions are orthoconvex
rectilinear polygons with aspect ratio at most 64; and the leaves are either rectangles with aspect ratio at
most 8, or L-shapes or S-shapes with aspect ratio at most 32.

For the special case where the depth is 1, they present an algorithm that uses only rectangles and L-shapes,
and the aspect ratio is at most ; the internal nodes use only rectangles with aspect ratio at
most .

Other treemaps

Voronoi Treemaps
[21] based on Voronoi diagram calculations. The algorithm is iterative and does not give
any upper bound on the aspect ratio.
Jigsaw Treemaps[22]
based on the geometry of space-filling curves. They assume that the weights are integers
and that their sum is a square number. The regions of the map are rectilinear polygons and
highly non-ortho-convex. Their aspect ratio is guaranteed to be at most 4.
GosperMaps
[23] based on the geometry of Gosper curves. It is ordered and stable, but has a very high
aspect ratio.

History
Area-based visualizations have existed for decades. For example,
mosaic plots (also known as Marimekko diagrams) use rectangular
tilings to show joint distributions (i.e., most commonly they are
essentially stacked column plots where the columns are of different
widths). The main distinguishing feature of a treemap, however, is
the recursive construction that allows it to be extended to
hierarchical data with any number of levels. This idea was invented
by professor Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland
Human – Computer Interaction Lab in the early 1990s. [24][25]
Shneiderman and his collaborators then deepened the idea by Hard disk space usage visualized in
introducing a variety of interactive techniques for filtering and TreeSize, software first released in
adjusting treemaps. 1996

These early treemaps all used the simple "slice-and-dice" tiling

algorithm. Despite many desirable properties (it is stable, preserves ordering, and is easy to implement), the
slice-and-dice method often produces tilings with many long, skinny rectangles. In 1994 Mountaz Hascoet
and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon invented a "squarifying" algorithm, later popularized by Jarke van Wijk, that
created tilings whose rectangles were closer to square. In 1999 Martin Wattenberg used a variation of the
"squarifying" algorithm that he called "pivot and slice" to create the first Web-based treemap, the
SmartMoney Map of the Market, which displayed data on hundreds of companies in the U.S. stock market.
Following its launch, treemaps enjoyed a surge of interest, especially in financial contexts.

A third wave of treemap innovation came around 2004, after Marcos Weskamp created the Newsmap, a
treemap that displayed news headlines. This example of a non-analytical treemap inspired many imitators,
and introduced treemaps to a new, broad audience. In recent years, treemaps have made their way into the
mainstream media, including usage by the New York Times.[26][27] The Treemap Art Project (http://treema
part.wordpress.com) produced 12 framed images for the National Academies (United States), shown the
Every AlgoRiThm has ART in It exhibit (http://www.cpnas.org/exhibitions/archive/every-algorithm-has-art
-in.html) in Washington, DC and another set for the collection of Museum of Modern Art in New York.

See also
Disk space analyzer
Data and information visualization
List of countries by economic complexity, which includes a list of Products Exports
Treemaps.
Marimekko Chart, a similar concept with one level of explicit hierarchy.

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External links
Treemap Art Project (http://treemapart.wordpress.com) produced exhibit for the National
Academies in Washington, DC
An article by (http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/b-eye/treemaps.pdf)Ben Shneiderman
on the use of treemaps
Comprehensive survey and bibliography (http://treevis.net) of Tree Visualization techniques
Vliegen, Roel; van Wijk, Jarke J.; van der Linden, Erik-Jan (September–October 2006).
"Visualizing Business Data with Generalized Treemaps" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110
724160547/http://www.magnaview.nl/documents/Visualizing_Business_Data_with_Generali
zed_Treemaps.pdf) (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 12
(5): 789–796. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2006.200 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FTVCG.2006.200).
PMID 17080801 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17080801). S2CID 18891326 (https://api.s
 emanticscholar.org/CorpusID:18891326). Archived from the original (http://www.magnaview.
nl/documents/Visualizing_Business_Data_with_Generalized_Treemaps.pdf) (PDF) on 24
July 2011.
History of Treemaps (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/index.shtml) by Ben
Shneiderman.
Hypermedia exploration with interactive dynamic maps (https://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.1995.
1053) Paper by Zizi and Beaudouin-Lafon introducing the squarified treemap layout
algorithm (named "improved treemap layout" at the time).
Indiana University (http://iv.slis.indiana.edu/sw/treemap.html) description
Live interactive treemap based on crowd-sourced discounted deals (http://www.dealmapper.
co.uk) from Flytail Group
Treemap sample in English (http://hivegroup.com/gallery/olympics2010/) from The Hive
Group
Several treemap examples (http://www.treemap.com/datasets/) made with Macrofocus
TreeMap
Visualizations using dynamic treemaps (http://www.drasticdata.nl/) and online treemapping
software (https://www.drasticdata.nl/treemapping.htm) by drasticdata

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