Pictures have long been acknowledged as worth a thousand words. Today, the same can be said of a thousand of data bits and not only for social sciences. In the humanities, too, computer-generated visualizations are an increasingly valued part of the process of knowledge production, enabling new access to complex forms of human experience. Two types of visualizations, designed by John R. Hott, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and member of the Early Mormon Marriage Project team, are available for browsing.
Chord Diagrams
Chord Diagram: Displays a chord diagram of a marriage. Given a husband’s id (by argument “id”) from the real database, it shows that man’s marriages and children in chord form. Links are created from women to their children in the marriage.
- Sample Static Male-Oriented Chord Diagram: Parley Parker Pratt and his wives and children
- Sample Static Female-Oriented Chord Diagram: Zina Huntington and her husbands and children
Chord Diagram over Time: Displays a chord diagram of the marriage, allowing the user to choose a time within the marriage to view or use a slider to step through the marriage. Given a husband’s id (by argument “id”) from the real database, it shows that man’s marriages and children in chord form. It also allows for a “time” argument of the form “YYYY-MM-DD” as the date of the marriage status to show Links are created from women to their children in the marriage
- Sample Male-Oriented Temporal Chord Diagram: Parley Parker Pratt and his wives and children
- Sample Female-Oriented Temporal Chord Diagram: Zina Huntington and her husbands and children
Lineage Flow Diagrams
Lineage Flow Diagram: Displays a sankey-like diagram of marriages, where the marriage units are represented by circles in the diagram. People are hyperedges between marriages, utilizing a square node to define the person in the network. On clicking a marriage unit, this will open up a popup frame with a chord diagram of the marriage.
Examples of a Static Male-Oriented Flow Diagram
- Orson and Parley Pratt with 1 degree of separation
- Brigham Young and relatives
- Joseph Smith and relatives
- Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, and relatives
Examples of a Static Female-Oriented Flow Diagram
Temporal Lineage Flow Diagram: Displays a sankey-like flow diagram of marriages, where the marriage units are represented by circles in the diagram. People are hyperedges between marriages, utilizing a square node to define the person in the network. This version is temporal, meaning that it provides a time slider to visualize which portions of the lineage are alive at any point in time. Any marriages or individuals which have no dates available will be shown “ghosted” for all time. On clicking a marriage unit, this will open up a popup frame with a chord diagram of the marriage.
Examples of a Temporal Male-Oriented Flow Diagram
- Orson and Parley Pratt with 1 degree of separation
- Brigham Young and relatives
- Joseph Smith and relatives
- Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, and relatives
Examples of a Temporal Female-Oriented Flow Diagram