A generalized uniform placement of alters on spherical surface (U-PASS) for visualizing general weighted networks

Abstract

Abstract Network visualization is an important tool for extracting information from the structure and configuration of a network, especially when the network includes weighted edges and nodes with attribute information. Previous studies have demonstrated an effective visualization method that projects the network onto a spherical surface. In this work, we extend this method, known as Uniform Placement of Alters on Spherical Surface (U-PASS), to general weighted networks. This extension enables the uniform distribution of network nodes across multiple layers of concentric spheres. In addition, we discuss the lower bound of a criterion called generalized spherical cap discrepancy, which is used to evaluate the uniformity of node distribution on a collapsed spherical surface.

Keywords

• Space-filling
• Particle swarm optimization
• Spherical discrepancy
• Network visualization