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Editorial
Abstract
Introduction
Visualising Mobility
Visualising transitions
Visualising trajectories
Discussion
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References
Case Studies Index
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Mapping the Life Course:
Visualising Migrations, Transitions &
Trajectories
Editorial Introduciton
Viewed from a physical scientific perspective, the data used in social
science research are often "messy", and, more often than not, this is a
consequence of their having been collected for purposes other than academic
research. For statistical analysis, this means the "experiments" are
essentially unplanned and out with the researcher's control. For
visualization, which might be seen as a great help in the analysis of such
data, it means that generic functions often do not produce useful graphics.
In this Case Study Humphrey Southall and Ben White start with a deceptively
simple visualization problem: how can we visualize individual life histories in
time and space? They illustrate two key points:
- in fact, this is a specific case of a rather more general problem, that of
visualizing longitudinal data.
- an old and well understood graphic, the lifeline diagram developed by
Swedish "Time Geographers" in the 1960's, provides a possible solution which
has not been implemented this far.
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