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Senior Research Scientist

Robert Kosara

About

Robert Kosara is a research scientist at Tableau Software. His focus is on the communication of data through visualization and visual storytelling. Robert is also working on furthering our understanding of visual perception and cognition, so we can make data easier to understand and develop tools to communicate it more effectively. His full list of publications can be found on his vanity website. Before joining Tableau in 2012, Robert was Associate Professor of Computer Science at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Robert received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. Degrees in Computer Science from Vienna University of Technology (Austria). In his copious spare time, Robert likes to run long distances and writing articles for his website, eagereyes.org.

Focus

Data Storytelling
Perception and Cognition
Visualization Techniques

What good is a data visualization if it doesn’t tell a story?

Papers

Guess Me If You Can: A Visual Uncertainty Model for Transparent Evaluation of Disclosure Risks in Privacy-Preserving Data Visualization

Aritra Dasgupta, Robert Kosara, Min Chen

Proceedings IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security, 2019

Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts

Robert Kosara

IEEE VIS Short Paper Proceedings, 2019

Circular Part-to-Whole Charts Using the Area Visual Cue

Robert Kosara

EuroVis Short Paper Proceedings

The Impact of Distribution and Chart Type on Part-to-Whole Comparisons

Robert Kosara

EuroVis Short Paper Proceedings

Skipping the Replication Crisis in Visualization: Threats to Study Validity and How to Address Them

Robert Kosara, Steve Haroz

BELIV (Evaluation and Beyond - Methodological Approaches for Visualization) 2018

An Argument Structure for Data Stories

Robert Kosara

EuroVis Short Paper Proceedings, 2017

Readability and Precision in Pictorial Bar Charts

Drew Skau, Robert Kosara

EuroVis Short Paper Proceedings, 2017

Finding a Clear Path: Structuring Strategies for Visualization Sequences

Jessica Hullman, Robert Kosara, Heidi Lam

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings EuroVis), vol. 36, no. 3, 2017

An Empire Built On Sand: Reexamining What We Think We Know About Visualization

Robert Kosara

Beyond Time And Errors: Novel Evaluation Methods For Visualization (BELIV), 2016

Reflecting on the Design Criteria for Explanatory Visualizations

Robert Kosara, Aritra Dasgupta, Enrico Bertini

Workshop on Creation, Curation, Critique and Conditioning of Principles and Guidelines in Visualization (C4PGV) at IEEE VIS 2016

The Connected Scatterplot for Presenting Paired Time Series

Steve Haroz, Robert Kosara, Steven L. Franconeri

Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), vol. 22, no. 9, pp. 2174–2186, 2016. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2015.2502587

Judgment Error in Pie Chart Variations

Robert Kosara, Drew Skau

Short Paper Proceedings of the Eurographics/IEEE VGTC Symposium on Visualization (EuroVis), pp. 91–95, 2016. DOI: 10.2312/eurovisshort.20161167

Arcs, Angles, or Areas: Individual Data Encodings in Pie and Donut Charts

Drew Skau, Robert Kosara

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings EuroVis), vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 121–130, 2016. DOI: 10.1111/cgf.12888

Presentation-Oriented Visualization Techniques

Robert Kosara

Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A), vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 80–85, 2016.

An Evaluation of The Impact of Visual Embellishments In Bar Charts

Drew Skau, Robert Kosara

Proceedings EuroVis, 2015 (forthcoming)

ISOTYPE Visualization – Working Memory, Performance, and Engagement with Pictographs

Steve Haroz, Robert Kosara, Steven L. Franconeri

CHI 2015 (in press)

Tapestry: A Different Kind of Conference on Storytelling with Data

Robert Kosara

Computer Graphics & Applications (Graphically Speaking), vol. 35, no. 2, pp.12–14, 2015.

Public Data and Visualizations: How are Many Eyes and Tableau Public Used for Collaborative Analytics?

Kristi Morton, Magdalena Balazinska, Dan Grossman, Robert Kosara, Jock Mackinlay

SIGMOD Record, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 17–22, 2014

Storytelling: The Next Step for Visualization

Robert Kosara, Jock D. Mackinlay

IEEE Computer (Special Issue on Cutting-Edge Research in Visualization), vol. 46, no. 5, pp. 44–50, 2013.

Adaptive Privacy-Preserving Visualization Using Parallel Coordinates

Aritra Dasgupta, Robert Kosara

Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings InfoVis), vol. 17, no. 12, pp. 2241–2248, 2011.

Laws of Attraction: From Perceived Forces to Conceptual Similarity

Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Robert Kosara

Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings InfoVis), vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 1009–1016, 2010.

The Shaping of Information by Visual Metaphors

Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Robert Kosara

Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings InfoVis), vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 1269-1276, 2008

Parallel Sets: Interactive Exploration and Visual Analysis of Categorical Data

Robert Kosara, Fabian Bendix, Helwig Hauser

Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 558–568, 2006.