The Travels of Herman Wells, 1951-1962

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The Travels of Herman Wells, 1951-1962

• Mark Meiss Heather Roinestad
• Computer Science
• Prof. James Capshew
• History and Philosophy of Science

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Herman Wells

• President of IU from late 1930s through 1950s
• University Chancellor until death in 2000
• Worked to transform IU from obscure Midwestern
  backwater into one of Americas most highly
  respected public research universities
• Traveled almost constantly, across the United
  States and visiting over 100 countries before his
  death

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Additional Background

• Prof James Capshew
• Served as Wells personal attendant as undergrad
  in 1970s
• Writing first scholarly biography of Wells
• Travel receipts
• Still exist from late 1951
• Best available data source on travels
• Include final years as IU President

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Project Task

• Present travel information in aesthetic and
  meaningful way
• To get a feel of the data not possible from
  staring at dates and places
• To see distribution of destinations
• To see when and how frequently travels occurred

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Related Work

• Hundreds of maps summarizing series of journeys
• Usually not concerned with depicting frequency
• Charting travel of explorers
• Common example of travel map
• Paths indicate approximate route and time
• Visual language well-established for hundreds of
  years

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Examples of maps

• http//makeashorterlink.com/?K230614FA
• http//makeashorterlink.com/?R240414FA
• http//makeashorterlink.com/?Z150314FA
• http//makeashorterlink.com/?I260514FA
• http//wassch71.tripod.com/memap60.jpg

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Data from Client

• Travel receipts late 1951 to 1962
• Final years of presidency
• Trips to secure funding and recruit faculty
• Foundations for international studies
• 12th General Assembly of the UN
• Excel spreadsheet
• Dates and locations (ZIP for domestic, city for
  international)

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Data Details

• Travel data
• Locations mapped to lat/long
• Most likely chosen for country destinations
  (e.g. Moscow for Soviet Union)
• 119 nodes, 1464 edges
• Dec 12 1951 May 15 1962
• GIS data
• US census bureau state/county/zip boundaries
• CIA world coastlines, bodies of water,
  political boundaries

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Data Analysis

• Other than conversion of format, not much
  analysis of data
• Intended to use burst detection
• Data bursty as rule, not exception
• Trips vary in nature
• state, state, state - unremarkable
• world, world, world burst of international
  travel
• Decided to start with major events, and then look
  for related travels

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Chizu

• Scripting language for producing high-quality
  bitmap images of complex networks with
  cartographic substrates
• Code for visualization separate from file
  containing cartographic and network data

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Why Chizu?

• ArcGIS expensive with brutal learning curve
• Chizu (ideally) allows even non-programmers to
  achieve useful results
• Useful for more than just our data, and more
  easily allows for changing code to reflect
  visualization changes

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Design - Format

• Static image
• Potential for use as illustration in biography
• Difference in screen and print resolution
• Poster size
• Even 600 DPI 8.5 x 11 not detailed enough

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Design - Substrate

• Three maps state, nation, world
• Different scales of travel
• World map cylindrical projection
• Simple projection
• Data, not projection, draws attention

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Design Overlay

• Destinations (nodes)
• Size dependent on frequency of visit
• Paths (lines)
• Great circle routes
• Repeated lines for repeated trips
• Color dependent on date of trip
• Width inversely dependent on frequency

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Design Paths

• Original idea
• Width dependent on frequency
• Color dependent on time of first visit
• Straight lines (in state, nation)
• Problems
• Difficult to see differences in widths
• Only see time of one visit, not others
• Easy to lose paths, especially narrow/short ones
  (and cant move nodes!)

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Design - Layout

• Maps on left, stacked with state on top, world on
  bottom
• Familiar zooming-in/out metaphor
• Separates maps for visibility connects them for
  easier connection of data
• Timeline on upper right
• Connects data to events with labels
• Personalizes data by connecting to Wells life
• Legend on lower right
• Explains color coding of lines
• Uses retro font to give a dated feel to map

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Not quite done

• Personalization through addition of images of
  Herman Wells
• Made more difficult by map resizing in Chizu
• Searching for high-quality open-source image
  scaling code
• Time-line of Herman Wells life
• Adds to personalization
• Connects data to time dimension
• Waiting for data

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Validation and User Studies

• Frequent feedback from Prof Capshew, Katy, and
  others
• Recent comments from Capshew encouraging
• Plan to do larger usability study in summer for
  wider audience
• Also plan to verify our corrections in travel data

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Challenges Opportunities

• Adding images
• Shading interior of countries by first visit
• Country boundaries not necessarily closed
  polygons
• Showing future (since 1950s) locations of IU
  branch campuses
• Improve feature set of Chizu scripting language
  (full-fledged parsing)
• Already provide scalability through tiling

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Acknowledgements

• Prof James Capshew and his research assistant for
  compiling the data
• Profs Capshew and Borner for feedback and
  suggestions
• Shashikant Penumarthy (IVL) and David Ripley
  (ANML) for their understanding of the world of
  GIS
• Ed Williams for his remarkably lucid guide to
  spherical geometry for aviation
• Thousands of nameless people for their work on
  the geographical data
• Herman Wells, without whom this research could
  not be done