Concepts inExtreme visualization: squeezing a billion records into a million pixels

Pixel

In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, (picture element) is a physical point in a raster image, or the smallest, addressable element in a display device; so it is the smallest, controllable element of a picture represented on the screen. The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates. LCD pixels are manufactured in a two-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares, but CRT pixels correspond to their timing mechanisms and sweep rates.  more from Wikipedia

Information visualization

Information visualization is the interdisciplinary study of "the visual representation of large-scale collections of non-numerical information, such as files and lines of code in software systems, library and bibliographic databases, networks of relations on the internet, and so forth".  more from Wikipedia

Query language

Query languages are computer languages used to make queries into databases and information systems. Broadly, query languages can be classified according to whether they are database query languages or information retrieval query languages. The difference is that a database query language attempts to give factual answers to factual questions, while an information retrieval query language attempts to find documents containing information that is relevant to an area of inquiry. Examples include: .  more from Wikipedia

Collaboration

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective) ¿ for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature¿by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.  more from Wikipedia

Cluster analysis

Cluster analysis or clustering is the task of assigning a set of objects into groups (called clusters) so that the objects in the same cluster are more similar (in some sense or another) to each other than to those in other clusters. Clustering is a main task of explorative data mining, and a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many fields, including machine learning, pattern recognition, image analysis, information retrieval, and bioinformatics.  more from Wikipedia

Database

A database is an organized collection of data, today typically in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality (for example, the availability of rooms in hotels), in a way that supports processes requiring this information (for example, finding a hotel with vacancies). The term database is correctly applied to the data and their supporting data structures, and not to the database management system (DBMS).  more from Wikipedia

Sensemaking

Sensemaking is the process by which people give meaning to experience. While this process has been studied by other disciplines under other names for centuries, the term "sensemaking" has primarily marked three distinct but related research areas since the 1970s: Sensemaking was introduced to Human¿computer interaction by PARC researchers Russell, Stefik, Pirolli and Card in 1993, to information science by Brenda Dervin, and organizational studies by Karl Weick.  more from Wikipedia