Uncertainty Visualization

Non-experts are confronted with uncertainty of predictions everyday when, e.g., using a navigation device or looking at the weather forecast. How- ever, there are no standards for representing uncertain information and repre- sentations could be easily misleading. Thus, we selected twelve representations that provide different levels of uncertainty information. We compared the repre- sentations in an online survey with 90 participants where we asked participants to judge their support in decision-making, familiarity, easiness to understand, and visual appeal. We further evaluated the four most promising representations in a turn-based online game. Players had to make decisions in a farming scenar- io based on a displayed weather forecast. The results of the survey and the game indicate that a function graph of a probability distribution function is the best way to communicate uncertain information. Nevertheless, our results also show that presenting more uncertainty information does not necessarily lead to better decisions.