Visualising high-dimensional state spaces with "Tuple Plots"

Abstract

Complex systems are described with high-dimensional data that is hard to visualise. Inselberg's parallel coordinates are one representation technique for visualising high-dimensional data. Here we generalise Inselberg's approach, and use it for visualising trajectories through high dimensional state spaces. We introduce two geometric projections of parallel coordinate representations -- 'plan tuple plots' and 'side tuple plots' -- and demonstrate a link between state space and ordinary space representations. We provide examples from many domains to illustrate use of the approach, including Cellular Automata, Random Boolean Networks, coupled logistic maps, reservoir computing, search algorithms, Turing Machines, and flocking.