Disperse points in a 2D visualisation

Question

I have a set of points like this (that I have clustered using R):

180.06576696, 192.64378568
180.11529253999998, 192.62311824
180.12106092, 191.78020965999997
180.15299478, 192.56909828000002
180.2260287, 192.55455869999997

These points are dispersed around a center point or centroid.

The problem is that the points are very close together and are, thus, difficult to see.

So, how do I move the points apart so that I can distinguish each point more clearly?

Thanks,

s

Answer 1

Maybe I'm overlooking some intricacy here, but...multiply by 10?

EDIT

Assuming the data you listed above are Cartesian (x,y) coordinate pairs, you can visualize them as a scatter plot using Google Charts. I've rounded your data to 3 decimal places, because Google Charts doesn't appear to handle higher precision than that.

I don't know the coordinates for your central point. In the above chart, I'm assuming it is somewhere nearby and not at (0,0). If it is at (0,0), then I imagine it will be difficult to visualize all of the data at once without some kind of "zoom-in" feature, scaling the data, or a very large screen.

Answer 2

slotishtype, without going into code, I think you first need to add in the following tweaking parameters to be used by the visualization code.

Given an x by y display box, fill the entire box, with input parameters [0.0 to 1.0]...

• overlap: the allowance for points to be placed on top of each other
• completeness: how important is it to display all of your data points
• centroid_display: how important is it to see the centroid in the same output

These produce the dependent parameter

• scale: the ratio between display distances to numerical distances

You will need code to

• calculate the distance(s) to the centroid like you said,
• and also the distances between data points, affecting the output based on the chosen input parameters.

I take inspiration from the fundamentals in the GraphViz dot manual. Look at the "Drawing Orientation, Size and Spacing" on p12.