Data Visualization Tools – An Update

T H O M S O N S C I E N T I F I C

Data Visualization Tools – An UpdatePresented at the 2007 PIUG Meeting, Symposium for Richard Kurt

Holly Chong-Williams

Manager, Patent Offices and Specialty Accounts

Thomson Scientific Corporate Markets

[email protected]

Copyright 2007 The Thomson Corporation2


Agenda

• Definitions of Data Visualization

• Benefits of Data Visualization and Applications

• Converting Information to Intelligence

• Commonly available software tools

• Value-add tools provided by commercial search engines

• Text-mining & Data-mining tools

• Fun Data Visualization Sites

• Conclusions



Holly’s First Data Visualization Experience, circa 1992

• SLA and Orbit User Days Presentation – “The Way of the

Warrior”, an analysis of Japanese technology trends.

• Downloaded Japio database IPC and publication year

data using the Orbit GET command.

• Uploaded the data into Lotus 123.

• “Eyeballed” the lists to generate rankings.

• Generated “OHP”s (overhead projector slides) graphs and

colored them using translucent color sheets.









Definitions of Data Visualization (aka scientific visualization, information visualization or visual analytics)

• “Visualization is the graphical presentation of information,

with the goal of providing the viewer with a qualitative

understanding of the information contents.”Matthew Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute,

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/datavis.html

• “The process of finding meaningful patterns in data and

creating a visual representation.”Richard Kurt, SLA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, 2002



Data visualization per a four

year old…



Data Visualization - Benefits

• Map/representation is inherently easier to understand

• “A picture is worth a thousand words”

• Provides organization to data

• Condenses data into knowledge

• Complex and large sets of information can be more easily

presented to decision makers - actionable

• Large data sets can be explored quickly

• New insights can be gained



Data Visualization Applications

• IP assessments

• Competitive intelligence

• Technology assessments

• R&D planning

• Benchmarking

• Trending and Forecasting

• Profiling



Information vs. Intelligence

• Information

• Who

• Inventor

• Patent Assignee

• What

• Abstract

• IPC

• When

• Application Date

• Publication Date

• Where

• Country

• Intelligence

• How does it work?

• Why are they doing it?

• What does it mean?

• How does it fit into the “big picture?”



Information vs. Intelligence

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Organize Analyze



Organize – Online Tools

• Simple Tools available from commercial search services

• Dialog RANK

• QuestelGET

• STN ANALYZE

• Microsoft Excel

• Create charts and summaries



OrganizeUsing RANK



Advantages of Online Tools

• No additional software

• Relatively easy to use

• Inexpensive

• Usually a few cents (or less) per document RANKed

• Results can be easily imported into more sophisticated

tools

• Microsoft Excel

• Microsoft Access



XML

• eXtensible Markup Language

• Collect information once and reuse it in a variety of ways



XML

Data

Web Page Excel Spreadsheet Portal

Access Database

RSS

Word Document

Text/Data Mining Application



Information Derived from XML Output



Alternate View of Publication Country for Top Assignees



Advantages of XML Download plus Microsoft Excel & Word

• Both Excel & Word are readily available

• Organize & Analyze

• Relatively easy to use

• Pay once for data download in XML, then analyze as

necessary at no additional cost

• Sophisticated graphing of results in Excel

• Enhanced readability in Word



Analyzing

• Data Mining

• Process of analyzing data from computers and other large relational

databases (i.e. structured data)

• Text Mining

• Process by computer of extracting information from unstructured (i.e.

natural language) text and making links to form new facts or hypotheses

• Information Visualization

• A visual approach to data analysis to reveal insights or unexpected

relationships through lists, co-occurrence matrices, maps etc



Stand Alone Products

• Aureka

• ClearForest

• Leximappe

• Matheo

• STN AnaVist

• Temis

• Thomson Data Analyzer

• VantagePoint

• VX Insight



Typical business questions

• What is new in this technology space?

• What is my IP position relative to my competitors?

• What new competitors are there?

• What collaborations are taking place?

• How are my competitors organized?

• Is the technology easy to penetrate?



- See relative year trends of companies

- Spot entrants / leavers

Who is leading the field?



-Map shows similarity of companies based on technology

-Spot companies who find new applications

-Avoid areas of high concentration

Who are potential targets?



-Matrix of companies vs companies

-Spot collaborations

Who do they work with?



Mining the Results of a Chemical Structure Search



Structure Search in DCR



MAP DCR Results to DWPI

102 individual compounds in DCR

416 patent records in DWPI



Import Results into Analysis Tool



Top IPC’s



Most Frequently Cited (Key) Patents



Most Frequently Cited (Key) Assignees







It’s Not All About Patents

• Important information can be mined from

• Other technical databases

• Science Citations Index

• Inspec

• Biosis

• Embase

• News and business publications

• Gale Group PROMT

• Dialog NEWSROOM



Conclusions

• Simple data visualization tools already exist on your

desktop.

• You can determine how easy/hard you want to work to get

the analysis you want/need.

• Keep it simple – in some ways it is still 1992 and there is

no “poof”



Mmmm, data…Special thanks to Bob Stewart (TS Content

Specialist) for his help and advice

For Richard…

Documents

Data Visualization Tools – An Update