The Impact of Expertise Bias on Data Visualization: Mars Landing Site Selection
46 views · Published 2 May 2018 · 2:54 · Indexed 29 September 2026
Channel: Neil McHenry · 2018 · People & Blogs
Final Presentation for VIZA 689: Data Visualization Spring 2018, Texas A&M University. Abstract: The process of deciding on a topic for any situation often involve a combination of subjective thoughts and objective data. This study focuses on potential selection bias for the particular case scenario of selecting a Mars landing site for human exploration of Mars, with provided scientific data and context from a video overview. A system has been developed that presents this Mars scientific data a participant by first showing them the user-made pre-system video, and then allows the participant to browse through four different types of visualizations of the scientific data in order to their final decision about which landing site they think would be best. The participants were placed into either two different experimental groups or the control group, in which the first experimental group were told that the video they were shown was a recording of an expert using the system, and in the second group were told that a non-expert, such a student was using the system. The control group did not experience a video before using the system at all. The results show that on average, people’s decisions aren’t very much influenced by what they’ve seen an expert or non-expert do, and therefore their final decisions were mainly based on their own exploration of the data. However, the way that they explored the data was influenced by what they saw in the pre-play video, which caused a small amount of bias in the results.
