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

🧠 Making Sense of Large Numbers Through Smarter Visualization

Join us for an insightful research presentation by Katerina Batziakoudi, PhD researcher in Data Visualization with the AVIZ team at Inria.

📊 About the Presentation

How do you wrap your head around the difference between a thousand, a million, and a billion? Traditional charts — whether linear or logarithmic — often fall short when it comes to helping people truly grasp and compare very large numbers, such as those found in public budgets.

Dr. Batziakoudi's research reframes this challenge: rather than approaching it purely as a visualization problem, she treats it fundamentally as a human understanding problem. Her work investigates how people naturally reason about large quantities, and how visual representations can be designed to align with that innate cognitive process.

🔬 Key Insights

• 🧩 Piecewise thinking: Psychological research suggests people don't perceive large values as strictly linear or logarithmic. Instead, we mentally chunk numbers into groups — thousands, millions, billions — and reason linearly within each group, much like how numbers are expressed in everyday language.
• 🎨 Novel visual designs: Building on these psychological foundations, Dr. Batziakoudi designed and tested new chart types that mirror this piecewise linear way of thinking.
• 📰 Real-world testing: Her designs were evaluated through a series of experiments and practical applications, including collaboration with journalists working with national budget data.
• ✅ Proven results: These approaches have demonstrated improvements in ease of comparison, reduced cognitive load, and greater confidence in interpreting numerical data.

🎯 Takeaway

This presentation offers a compelling, cognitively grounded framework for visualizing extreme numerical ranges — one that starts from how people actually think, not just how data is mathematically structured.

Perfect for designers, researchers, data journalists, and anyone working with complex numerical communication. 👩‍💻📈