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Topic hypergraph: hierarchical visualization of thematic structures in long documents

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Abstract

Thematic information of a long document (i.e., a novel) can be multi-faceted: an interleaving of multiple topics, a sequential evolution of a set of themes, or a crossing superimposition of topics and themes. Conventional topic-based visualization approaches are inefficient to capture this complicated thematic structure. This paper introduces a novel topic-based model, called the topic hypergraph, that characterizes the thematic structure of a long document with a hypergraph representation. Each hypergraph node represents a unique document piece, and encodes its theme as a composition of multiple topics. Two types of relationships among nodes are modeled: an edge that connects two consecutive themes to present their sequential transition, and a hyperedge that encodes a topic. The new representation is essentially a 2D reformulation of the linear streamgraph representation, and can be adaptive by constructing a multi-level hierarchy. We design a suite of visualization and interaction tools to allow users to interactively analyze the theme evolution, theme diversities, and topic interleaving. Our approach is also suitable for comparing multiple long documents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    GuiZhen Wang, ChaoKai Wen, BingHui Yan, Cong Xie & Wei Chen

  2. School of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, China

    RongHua Liang

Authors
  1. GuiZhen Wang
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  2. ChaoKai Wen
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  3. BingHui Yan
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  4. Cong Xie
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  5. RongHua Liang
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  6. Wei Chen
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Correspondence to Wei Chen.

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Wang, G., Wen, C., Yan, B. et al. Topic hypergraph: hierarchical visualization of thematic structures in long documents. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 56, 1–14 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-013-4831-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-013-4831-8

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