Integrality and meaning: essential and orthogonal dimensions of graphical data display.

There are few sound principles, rules, or laws to guide construction of graphic displays of medical data or information. The present paper describes two orthogonal dimensions of data displays: integrality and meaningfulness. These are hypothesized to be both fundamental building blocks of a theory of graphic representation and programmatically useful principles for organizing previously created graphic displays and creating new ones. Examples taken from recent medical informatics literature illustrate high and low integral vs. high and low meaningful displays. If the present analysis is correct, then pattern recognition tasks will be better supported by displays that are high on both integrality and meaningfulness. Integrality, it is hypothesized, increased the degree to which a pattern is apparent. Meaningfulness increases the degree to which a pattern, once detected, is interpretable.