October 2022 | IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS)

Probablement, Wahrscheinlich, Likely? A Cross-Language Study of How People Verbalize Probabilities in Icon Array Visualizations.

Noëlle Rakotondravony, Yiren Ding, Lane T. Harrison
Paper
Two charts showing results from two experiments. Left: Expression-to-Vis experiment. A user icon, an icon array with 100 gray icons, an arrow pointing to a second icon array with 67 icons in orange are above a graph that shows the 95% confidence interval of the values drawn on the icon arrays on the x-axis. The list of probability expressions is on the y-axis. Five 95% confidence intervals representing the range of drawn values in the five languages are displayed for each probability expression. Right: Vis-to-Expression experiment. A user icon, an icon array with 35 orange icons, and a list of probability expressions with the expression 'likely' highlighted are above a confidence interval graph that shows the value appearing on the icon array on the x-axis. The list of probability expressions is on the y-axis. Five 95% confidence intervals representing the range of drawn values in the five languages are displayed for each probability expression.
An overview of our cross-language study consisting of two experiments. In (a) Expression-to-Vis, we explore how people draw icon-array visualizations when given particular probability expressions, showing 95% CIs mean responses across Arabic, English, French, German, and Mandarin. In (b) Vis-to-Expression we investigate how people choose probability expressions to describe icon-array visualizations depicting different values. 95% CIs show the icon-array ranges to which each expression was assigned by participants, across the studied languages.

Abstract

Visualizations today are used across a wide range of languages and cultures. Yet the extent to which language impacts how we reason about data and visualizations remains unclear. In this paper, we explore the intersection of visualization and language through a cross-language study on estimative probability tasks with icon-array visualizations. Across Arabic, English, French, German, and Mandarin, n = 50 participants per language both chose probability expressions — e.g. likely, probable — to describe icon-array visualizations (Vis-to-Expression), and drew icon-array visualizations to match a given expression (Expression-to-Vis). Results suggest that there is no clear one-to-one mapping of probability expressions and associated visual ranges between languages. Several translated expressions fell significantly above or below the range of the corresponding English expressions. Compared to other languages, French and German respondents appear to exhibit high levels of consistency between the visualizations they drew and the words they chose. Participants across languages used similar words when describing scenarios above 80% chance, with more variance in expressions targeting mid-range and lower values. We discuss how these results suggest potential differences in the expressiveness of language as it relates to visualization interpretation and design goals, as well as practical implications for translation efforts and future studies at the intersection of languages, culture, and visualization. Experiment data, source code, and analysis scripts are available at the following repository: https://osf.io/g5d4r/.

BibTeX

@article{rakotondravony2022probablement,
  author      = {No\"{e}lle Rakotondravony and Yiren Ding and Lane Harrison},
  title       = {{Probablement, Wahrscheinlich, Likely ? A Cross-Language Study of How People Verbalize Probabilities in Icon Array Visualizations}},
  journal     = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  year        = {2022},
  volume      = {29},
  number      = {1},
  pages       = {1189-1199},
  url         = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.09608},
  doi         = {10.1109/TVCG.2022.3209367},
}