Software visualization is nifty stuff; but is it the powerful cognitive tool it is often assumed to be? This chapter attempts to moderate the understandable enthusiasm for software visualization and to raise some of the questions for which the discipline doesn't yet have answers. The chapter is structured as a list of questions with discussion. The questions are not a comprehensive analysis of cognitive challenges in software visualization. Rather, the chapter attempts to provide a list sufficiently provocative to give designers pause, in order: (a) to establish that good software visualization isn't simply a matter of mimicking paper-based tasks or doing what is technically easy---and certainly isn't `solved' yet; but also (b) even simple tools can improve software comprehension, if they're the right ones.

This research addresses the problem of obtaining useful knowledge from multiple theme geographic data where the size and complexity of the dataset challenges human compre-hension. A theoretical foundation for geographic knowledge discovery in databases is de-veloped commencing with Pawlak’s (1982, 1991) theory of abstract knowledge. Pawlak’s theory is founded on notions of equivalence relations and classification. These ideas are combined with the well-known mathematical concepts of set definition by extension and by intension to develop the concepts of extensional knowledge (i.e facts) and intensional knowledge (e.g. rules). The theory traverses the concepts of generalisation, specialisation, induction, deduction, unsupervised learning and supervised learning. Further considera-tions lead to proposing that empirical objects are dependent upon, and a consequence of, an intelligent agent’s sensory experience of real-world phenomena. The a priori existence of objects in nature is rejected. A theory of empirical spatial knowledge is developed, based on the idea that spatial experience of reality is fundamentally dependent upon the spatial configuration of the sensors of the sensing entity. It is shown that the spatial relationships

Abstract not found

A fundamental problem in spoken language is the duality between the continuous aspects of phonetic performance and the discrete aspects of phonological competence. We study a specific instance of this problem in Hungarian vowel harmony. We present a model where continuous phonetic distinctions uncovered by our experiments are linked to the discreteness of phonological form using the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics. Key words: vowel harmony; phonetics-phonology relation; non-linear dynamics; Hungarian. 1