A slight tangent: another non-standard way of communicating high-dimensional data visually is to render it as human faces.
Peter Watts mentions the idea in his novel "Blindsight" [0], but amusingly enough it is based on actual research:
> those [faces] used near the end of the book represent a very real form of statistical analysis: Chernoff Faces[1], which are more effective than the usual graphs and statistical tables at conveying the essential characteristics of a data set[2].
Here's a passage from the novel:
> He nodded, turning his attention to a woman with no eyes. "Skull diameter scales to total mass. Mandible length scales to EM transparency at one Angstrom. One hundred thirteen facial dimensions, each presenting a different variable. Principle-component combinations present as multifeature aspect ratios." He turned to face me, his naked gleaming eyes just slightly sidecast. "You'd be surprised how much gray matter is dedicated to the analysis of facial imagery. Shame to waste it on anything as—counterintuitive as residual plots or contingency tables."
[1] Chernoff, H. 1973. Using faces to represent points in k-dimensional space graphically. Journal of the Americal Statistical Association 68:361-368.
[2] Wilkinson, L. 1982. An experimental evaluation of multivariate graphical point representations. Human Factors in Computer Systems: Proceedings. Gaithersberg, MD, 202-209.
Peter Watts mentions the idea in his novel "Blindsight" [0], but amusingly enough it is based on actual research:
> those [faces] used near the end of the book represent a very real form of statistical analysis: Chernoff Faces[1], which are more effective than the usual graphs and statistical tables at conveying the essential characteristics of a data set[2].
Here's a passage from the novel:
> He nodded, turning his attention to a woman with no eyes. "Skull diameter scales to total mass. Mandible length scales to EM transparency at one Angstrom. One hundred thirteen facial dimensions, each presenting a different variable. Principle-component combinations present as multifeature aspect ratios." He turned to face me, his naked gleaming eyes just slightly sidecast. "You'd be surprised how much gray matter is dedicated to the analysis of facial imagery. Shame to waste it on anything as—counterintuitive as residual plots or contingency tables."
[0] http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
[1] Chernoff, H. 1973. Using faces to represent points in k-dimensional space graphically. Journal of the Americal Statistical Association 68:361-368.
[2] Wilkinson, L. 1982. An experimental evaluation of multivariate graphical point representations. Human Factors in Computer Systems: Proceedings. Gaithersberg, MD, 202-209.