Tools for displaying a multidimensional data table?
- by ShreevatsaR
[Apologies if this sort of question is off-topic for SuperUser. Please redirect to the right place if so.]
There is a 3-dimensional array of values. (That is, instead of a table/2-dimensional array with values in a grid, the values can be thought of in a cube instead.) Is there a way to display this "cube" interactively, ideally on a webpage?
Specifically, given the data, it would work something like this: the user selects two of the 3 variables. He then sees a "stack" of tables, one for each value of the third variable (cross-sections, in other words). By selecting the appropriate table from the stack, he can see the (i,j,k) value he wants.
The "technology" for displaying such a thing (stacked tables, rotation, etc.) already exists, so this seems the sort of thing that someone ought to have written already. To be clear: I don't need sophisticated graphics necessarily, just the ability to select from cross-sections of variables.
But I have no experience with (say, for displaying on a webpage) what web gadgets exist, so I'm clueless how to even search for one. (Google searches like "multidimensional data visualization" didn't throw up anything useful. Google Spreadsheets can do a few kinds of charts which can be embedded on a webpage, but I cannot tell if this is one of them.)
[I can imagine how it ought to work for higher dimensions. For four-dimensions, instead of selecting just a stack, you'd first select an (i,j) from an "outer table", which would show all (k,l) values for that (i,j). For higher dimensions, inductively: you select (i,j), and then repeat what you'd do with 2 fewer dimensions.]
So has this been written? Is this easy to write? Where ought one to look for such a thing?
