Bank Data Example

Input Data

• has information about deposits into various accounts at two different banks.
• consists of three tables.
• one table consists of information about each bank account, such as the bank and the owner's social security number and picture.
• another table consists of a list of deposits at the first bank.
• the final table contains a list of deposits at the second bank.

The accounts input file looks like:
100000000 1 1028 /p/devise/demo/dat/faces/livny.ppm
100000003 1 1030 /p/devise/demo/dat/faces/ramakrishnan.ppm
...

Each of the deposits input files look like:
01 01 1980 1040 7757351 "notesfile.txt"
03 01 1980 1050 4060884 "notesfile.txt"
...

Problem

Visualization

The visualization is created as follows:

1. Define the Accounts view. This view simply displays all of the accounts, with the owner's social security number (with an offset for bank number) as the X axis, and the account number as the Y axis.
2. Define the SSN view. This view displays the social security numbers for the owner of each account. The social security number is again the X axis, and the Y axis is fixed.
3. Define the picture view. This view displays the pictures for the owner of each account, with the same axes as the SSN view.
4. The Accounts, SSN, and picture views are linked on the X axis (which is the person's social security number). The X axis is zoomed in so that we only see the accounts, social security number, and picture of one person at a time.
5. Define three views for the main window (the three views are piled on top of each other). Two of the views display each of the deposits data sources (there is one symbol displayed for each deposit). The X location of each deposit symbol is the date, the Y location is the account number, and the vertical size is the deposit amount. The yellow and chocolate colors distinguish deposits at the two different banks. The other view in this window displays the accounts of the selected person. Again, the Y location depends on the account number, and the two colors distinguish between accounts at the two different banks.
6. Create a record link between the Accounts view in the upper left and the accounts view in the main window, with the Accounts view in the upper left as the master. This means that only accounts shown in the Accounts view will be shown by the horizontal lines in the main window.

Observations

The Accounts, SSN, or picture view is used to select the person whose accounts are to be shown (by scrolling left or right). (In this case, we are looking at Bucky Badger's acconts.) The Accounts view shows that person's accounts at the two different banks. These accounts are also shown by the horizontal lines in the main view.

The vertical bars for transactions belonging to a particular account are centered on the horizontal line designating that account. Other transactions belong to other accounts. This can be considered a "visual join" because we are able to visually determine which deposits are made to a particular account without actually joining the accounts and the deposits tables.

We can see that Bucky Badger has no suspicously high periods of activity in any of his accounts. However, there is some suspicious activity at the lower right part of the main window. By selecting the various persons, we can determine who owns the accounts in which this activity is taking place.