TreeVersity: Interactive visualizations for comparing two trees
John Alexis Guerra Gómez,
Audra Buck-Coleman, Catherine
Plaisant and Ben Shneiderman
HCIL Symposium
May 22 2012

Our beloved president has just prepared the Country’s budget, and you as a member of the senate need to approve it.

• Agencies, Bureaus and Accounts that change significantly compared to last year:
– Agencies that got removed (or created)
– Bureaus that increase more than one hundred million
– Accounts that decreased more than 30%

Agency name
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Treeland Budget: What has changed?
Bureau name
Dep. of Defense--Military
Dep. of Defense--Military
Operation and Maintenance
Operation and Maintenance
Operation and Maintenance
Account name
Dependent's Education Gift Fund
Defense Vessel Transfer Receipt Account
Operation and Maintenance, Defense-wide
Defense Health Program
Disaster relief
Operation and Maintenance
Procurement
Military Personnel
Military Personnel
Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid
Procurement, Defense-wide
Military Personnel, Army
Military Personnel, Navy
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Defense
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Education
Dep. of Homeland Security
Office of Federal Student Aid
Dep.al Management
Military Personnel, Marine Corps Military Personnel
Military Personnel
Military Personnel
Office of Elementary Ed
Office of Elementary Ed
Office of Elementary Ed
Office of Federal Student Aid
Office of Federal Student Aid
National Guard Personnel, Army
Military Personnel, Air Force
Reading Excellence
Indian Student Education
Education Reform
?
Federal Student Loan Reserve Fund
Program Admin
Headquarters renovation
Research, Development, Acquisitions and Operations
Systems Acquisition Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
Health Resources and Services Admin Emergency health
Dep.al Management
Science and Technology
Health Resources and Services Admin Vaccine Injury Compensation
Substance Abuse Admin Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Admin
Dep. of Homeland Security
Dep. of Health
Dep. of Health
Dep. of Health
Dep. of Health
Dep. of Health
Dep. of Health
Substance Abuse Admin
Medicare and Medicaid
Medicare and Medicaid
Dep. of Health Medicare and Medicaid
International Assistance Programs International Assistance Program
International Assistance Programs International Security Assistance
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Program Management
Payments to Health Care Trust Funds
Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Account
Gifts and donations, Peace Corps
Peacekeeping Operations
2011 2012
$500,000,000.00
$600,000,000.00
$100,000,000.00
$200,000,000.00
$2,000,000,000.00 $2,200,000,000.00
$1,300,000,000.00
$200,000,000.00
$0.00
$800,000,000.00
$500,000,000.00
$500,000,000.00
$1,800,000,000.00 $1,700,000,000.00
$2,300,000,000.00 $2,900,000,000.00
$2,500,000,000.00 $2,400,000,000.00
$2,750,000,000.00 $2,600,000,000.00
$2,600,000,000.00 $2,500,000,000.00
$2,400,000,000.00 $2,300,000,000.00
$1,100,000,000.00 $1,500,000,000.00
$400,000,000.00
$0.00
$1,500,000,000.00 $1,500,000,000.00
$2,000,000,000.00 $1,800,000,000.00
$1,000,000,000.00
$900,000,000.00
$3,000,000,000.00 $2,500,000,000.00
$1,500,000,000.00 $1,600,000,000.00
$500,000,000.00
$350,000,000.00
$2,000,000,000.00 $2,050,000,000.00
$0.00
$500,000,000.00
$500,000,000.00
$450,000,000.00
$1,500,000,000.00
$100,000,000.00
$700,000,000.00
$800,000,000.00
$900,000,000.00 $1,000,000,000.00
$1,800,000,000.00 $2,950,000,000.00
$1,900,000,000.00 $1,900,000,000.00
$1,300,000,000.00 $1,400,000,000.00
$300,000,000.00
$0.00
$100,000,000.00
$100,000,000.00

$0
Value (Height)
-$100,000
0% Percentage (Color)
-70%
Topological (border)
Removed
Created
+$100,000
+70%

Exploratory User Study (8 participants)
Participants were able to:
– Understand codifications of change without previous training
– Perform comparison tasks

Related Work 
Node value changes
Related Work 
No Yes
TreeVersity ;)
Aggregated trees
(values in leaves)
Values in all nodes
Topology changes
No
Yes

BEA Category
Agencies
Bureaus

BEA Category
Agencies
Bureaus

BEA Category
Agencies
Bureaus

Month
States

Month
States

Airlines Passengers Information (III)
Month
States

Airlines Passengers Information (IV)
Month
States

Month
States

TreeVersity: a viable and generalizable solution for the hard problem of
comparing two trees using node value and topology differences
John Alexis Guerra Gómez http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/TreeVersity jguerrag@cs.umd.edu
@duto_guerra
Thanks to:
CATT Lab
CISTM
Fulbright S&T
Pat Hu and Ben Bederson

Region
Airlines

TreeJuxtaposer [Munzer et al. 2003] TaxVis [Graham & Kennedy 2003-2009]

Map of the Market [Wattenberg 1999]

Comparing Topology & Node Values
Topology
Same team
Transferred in (Moved)
Joined the NBA (Created)
Node values
Worse performance
Better performance
Difficult to understand
Can’t show removed nodes
Can’t show interior node values
Contrast TreeMaps [Ying Tu & Han-Wei Shen 2007]