Treemaps, developed by Ben Shneiderman in the early 1990s, initially visualized hierarchies and disk space. Evolving from "slice-and-dice" to "squarifying" algorithms, treemaps became more readable. Spotfire leverages this history, using squarified treemaps to effectively visualize large hierarchical data, enabling users to quickly see patterns and part-to-whole relationships in complex datasets. This session will explore Shneiderman's historical influence and demonstrate Spotfire's use of treemaps for data analysis.
