Tech Report HCIL-2001-05

Hochheiser, H., Shneiderman, B. (March 2001)
Visual Specification of Queries for Finding Patterns in Time-Series Data
Proceedings of Discovery Science 2001, 441-446. Washington, DC, November 2001. [Published Version]
HCIL-2001-05, CS-TR-4236, UMIACS-TR-2001-25, ISR-TR-2005-15

Widespread interest in discovering features and trends in time- series has generated a need for tools that support interactive exploration.This paper introduces timeboxes: a powerful graphical, direct-manipulation metaphor for the specification of queries over time-series datasets. Our TimeFinder implementation of timeboxes supports interactive formulation and modification of queries, thus speeding the process of exploring time-series data sets and guiding data mining. TimeFinder includes windows for timebox queries, individual time-series, and details-on-demand. Other features include drag-and-drop support for query-by-example and graphical envelopes for displaying the extent of the entire data set and result set from a given query. Extensions involving increased expressive power and general temporal data sets are discussed.