TY - CONF T1 - Finding comparable temporal categorical records: A similarity measure with an interactive visualization T2 - IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, 2009. VAST 2009 Y1 - 2009 A1 - Wongsuphasawat,K. A1 - Shneiderman, Ben KW - data visualisation KW - Educational institutions KW - Feedback KW - Information retrieval KW - interactive search tool KW - interactive systems KW - interactive visualization tool KW - large databases KW - M&M Measure KW - Match & Mismatch measure KW - Medical services KW - numerical time series KW - parameters customization KW - Particle measurements KW - Similan KW - similarity measure KW - Similarity Search KW - temporal categorical databases KW - Temporal Categorical Records KW - temporal databases KW - Testing KW - Time measurement KW - time series KW - transportation KW - usability KW - very large databases KW - visual databases KW - Visualization AB - An increasing number of temporal categorical databases are being collected: Electronic Health Records in healthcare organizations, traffic incident logs in transportation systems, or student records in universities. Finding similar records within these large databases requires effective similarity measures that capture the searcher's intent. Many similarity measures exist for numerical time series, but temporal categorical records are different. We propose a temporal categorical similarity measure, the M&M (Match & Mismatch) measure, which is based on the concept of aligning records by sentinel events, then matching events between the target and the compared records. The M&M measure combines the time differences between pairs of events and the number of mismatches. To accom-modate customization of parameters in the M&M measure and results interpretation, we implemented Similan, an interactive search and visualization tool for temporal categorical records. A usability study with 8 participants demonstrated that Similan was easy to learn and enabled them to find similar records, but users had difficulty understanding the M&M measure. The usability study feedback, led to an improved version with a continuous timeline, which was tested in a pilot study with 5 participants. JA - IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, 2009. VAST 2009 PB - IEEE SN - 978-1-4244-5283-5 M3 - 10.1109/VAST.2009.5332595 ER -