Aligning Data Visualization with Human Cognition: A Novel Approach to Large Numbers.

Join us for an insightful presentation by Dr. Katerina Batziakoudi, PhD in Data Visualization, alongside the AVIZ team at Inria. 🌟

Dr. Batziakoudi's groundbreaking research focuses on helping individuals comprehend extremely large numbers, such as the thousands, millions, and billions commonly found in public budgets. 📊 💡 Traditional linear and logarithmic charts often complicate understanding these values, making them difficult to compare.

Rather than viewing this solely as a visualization challenge, she approaches it as a human understanding problem: examining how people intuitively think about large numbers and how visual displays can better resonate with that cognitive process.

Her work highlights that individuals do not perceive large values as simply linear or logarithmic; instead, we naturally chunk them into groups like thousands, millions, and billions, reasoning linearly within those segments, much like the way numbers are articulated in language. 📖

Building on psychological insights, Dr. Batziakoudi has designed and tested innovative visual representations tailored to this piecewise linear thinking. Through a series of experiments and real-world evaluations—including collaborative efforts with journalists analyzing national budget data—she demonstrates that these new designs significantly ease comparisons, lessen mental strain, and increase confidence in interpretation.

This presentation offers a novel design perspective for visualizing extreme numerical ranges, rooted in genuine human reasoning about numbers. Don't miss it!

📍 Location: 3 Rue Rossini
🔗 Get your tickets here!