Rolled-out Wordles: A Heuristic Method for Overlap Removal of 2D Data Representatives

Abstract

When representing 2D data points with spacious objects such as labels, overlap can occur. We present a simple algorithm which modifies the (Mani-)Wordle idea with scan-line based techniques to allow a better placement. We give an introduction to common placement techniques from different fields and compare our method to these techniques w.r.t. euclidean displacement, changes in orthogonal ordering as well as shape and size preservation. Especially in dense scenarios our method preserves the overall shape better than known techniques and allows a good trade-off between the other measures. Applications on real world data are given and discussed.