Entry Name: NYU-Bowen-MC2

VAST Challenge 2015
Mini-Challenge 2

Team Members:

Bowen Yu, New York University, yubowenok@gmail.com PRIMARY

Bo Zhou, New York University, bz387@nyu.edu

Student Team:

Yes

Did you use data from both mini-challenges?

Yes

Analytic Tools Used:

Ad-hoc System (self-implemented for VAST challenge 2015)

Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in total?

233

May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2015 is complete?

Yes

Video Download

Video:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1l1r9gyf2ot6gy/NYU-Bowen-MC2.wmv?dl=0

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Questions

NOTE:

- We have re-assigned IDs to the individuals based on their order of appearances throughout the weekend. The individuals are then grouped based on the similarity between their movement trajectories. Group IDs were assigned.

- Our system displays the newly assigned IDs. Therefore the snapshots all contain our custom group IDs.

- However, the person-ids listed in the answer use the IDs from the raw data.

MC2.1 – Identify those IDs that stand out for their large volumes of communication. For each of these IDs

a. Characterize the communication patterns you see.

b. Based on these patterns, what do you hypothesize about these IDs?

Limit your response to no more than 4 images and 300 words.

There are 3 IDs that stand out: 839736, 1278894 and external

ID 839736: Information Center.

a. Patterns:

· This ID connected with almost every visitor that visited the park each day.

· It was receiving and sending messages from everyone, throughout the day.

· It always responded with one message upon receiving one from a visitor.

· The area of this ID was always “Entry Corridor”.

b.

We hypothesize that this ID is the “Information Center” from the park services. The facility 60 “Daily Slab Maps and Info” are just at Entry Corridor.

ID 1278894: Cindysaurus Trivia Game system.

a. Patterns:

· This ID connected with a large part of the visitors that visited the park each day.

· It was sending and receiving messages only at certain times of the day.

· The area of this ID was always “Entry Corridor”.

· Every day, it broadcast message exactly five periods. Each period starts from 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm and 8pm, respectively. In each period, it broadcast 12 times with exactly 5 minutes intervals. Upon broadcasting, it received responds from the park visitors sooner or later, but most likely within 5 minutes.

b. We hypothesize that this ID is the “Cindysaurus Trivia Game” system from the park services. It should also be located at Facility 60 with the Information Center. People who registered for the trivia game will receive questions, they tried to answer them within 5 minutes.

ID external: External Port.

a. Patterns:

· This ID connected with almost every visitor that visited the park each day.

· It is receives messages from everyone, throughout the day.

· It only receives message, never send one.

· There is a burst of receiving messages in 15 minutes before 12pm on Sunday.

b. We hypothesize that this ID is the external message system from the park services. Visitors can send messages to the external world, e.g. post Tweets or upload photos, or contact entities outside the park, such as the police.

MC2.2 – Describe up to 10 communications patterns in the data. Characterize who is communicating, with whom, when and where. If you have more than 10 patterns to report, please prioritize those patterns that are most likely to relate to the crime.

Limit your response to no more than 10 images and 1000 words.

1) The volume chart of the Information Center (ID: 839736) on Sunday was very abnormal. Not like Friday and Saturday, there were two obvious peaks.

One peak was at 12pm, the other is roughly before 3pm. For the peak at 12 pm, see the complete analysis in answers to MC2.3.

Here we explained the reason for the minor peak before 3pm. Since the crime was discovered at the Pavilion near 11:45am. The crime scene was closed. Also the show by Scott Jones, at facility 63, which originally planned for 3pm to 4pm was cancelled. People went to the stage around the show’s planned start time, 3pm. They somehow noticed that the show was cancelled, so they send message to question the Information Center what happened. The heatmap of message volume can tell the story.

2) The volume chart of External Port (ID: external) on Sunday was also abnormal.

Please refer to the answers to MC2.3 to see the patterns and our explanations.

3) There were a group of people have very high volume of communication in a short period of time.

Again, please refer to the first paragraph of our answers to MC2.3 to see the patterns and our explanations.

4)

Summer Campers. We have identified one type of visitors. They have many groups. Each of them consisted of about 10 people. Those groups were very strongly connected to each other. They stayed only for one day in the park. The like to visit similar types of rides. They spend a lot of time shopping before leaving the park.

5)

Beer won’t make friends. Many visitors liked to hanging out at the beer garden. A large percentage of them were individual visitors, who came alone to the park. It was unfortunate that they didn’t become friend while staying at the bar.

MC2.3 – From this data, can you hypothesize when the crime was discovered? Describe your rationale.

Limit your response to no more than 3 images and 300 words.

In our hypothesis, the crime was first discovered at 11:30am on Sunday by some members of a large group. The group contained 37 people. They moved with the same pattern in MC1 data. The group members’ person-ids include: 1038892, 1041478, etc. After some of them discovered the vandalism, they first communicated using the app within their group.

Then they reported it to the Information Center (ID: 839736). Maybe some of them started calling the police, or posting Tweets etc. (sending messages to ID external). Some other groups of visitors (such as a 10-people group, including ID: 1559001 etc.) joined them and started sending out messages. The corresponding pattern can be found during 11:45am to 12:00pm, on the volume chart of ID: external. We can also learn from the below image, this 10-people group is a big fan of Scott. They just watched his show in the morning. They were angry at the crime and immediately started telling everyone what happened.

Around 12:00pm, everyone in the Pavilion knew what happened. We guess it was because the park operators announced that: “Dear, visitors! We are sorry for the inconvenience! The Creighton Pavilion is going to be closed in 30 minutes!”

“Why?” “What happened?” many visitors who were still in the pavilion immediately asked the Information Center. This could be the direct cause of sudden peak of receiving messages of the Information Center (ID: 839736).