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**to sum it up- lets say i have 4 things i am looking at over a time period. they can be true or false. I am trying to notice their state (whether they are true or false), and when all 4 are true at the same time be alerted. But i want to see the history of when they become true. Lets say your trying to tell when the big 3 of the miami heat are in any given place. You would need to know if Chris Bosh is present at what given times, when Wade is present at what given times, and when Lebron James is present at the given times. Hence you want to notice the any occurrence in time when all 3 are present at the same instance in time (you have Bosh, Wade and James present or true at the same time. **

Lets consider the Game of Clue. Lets say one is trying to solve a murder by figuring out when 3 events occurred at the same time. You need a person place and a thing.

so if i have Mr Bob Saget , in the living room , with a clawhammer all occurring at 8am then i solved my murder.

however if i only have Donald trump in the living room at 8am and then the axe at 10am i didnt solve my murder because i need all 3 things to occur at the same time.

This is one way i thought to represent these 3 boolean variables needing to be true at once (you need the Xs to all occur in the same column and then you can highlight it). Are there any other ways to represent this information?

Also what if i dynamically wanted to change the time filter , to say rather than 1 hour chunks 1 minute chunks (i could re draw the lines to a different scale and plot the xs again).

enter image description here

also any suggestions for tags?

below is other food for thought I am using to try and compose alternative ideas.

enter image description here

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    I'm afraid I don't understand your question. Three booleans values "at once" can simply be represented by one boolean value? If alt three criteria are true, then the single "all true" value is "true"...? If you want to visualize this, then a grid similar to your mockup is great. Just highlight the rows/cols that meets the criteria you're looking for. Just like Bingo: yorehab.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/slingo6.png Nov 25, 2013 at 20:32
  • Our brain's pretty good at matching similar stuff (search for Gestalt). Eg. three in a row on a 1 arm bandit: gunmin.net/gunmin-slots.jpg and empty "pie charts" in TP: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/… Nov 25, 2013 at 20:38
  • i edited it in bold. i was to monitor 3 or more things that can either be true or false at any given point in time. I want to notice all the points in time in which all of these are true. Say if Michele Obama , Barack Obama, and Biden all being in the whitehouse. At anypoint in time this is true i want to notice this to say increase the security outside . does this make sense? or say if there are 5 people at the poker table, I have a pair in my hand, and my chips are roughly 25% of the entire pot, notice when all 3 things are true at what points in time so i can max bet. Nov 26, 2013 at 15:17
  • So you are asking about how to have a signal be immediately noticed when it occurs? A loud siren? A flashing message? You just need something that gets around change blindness.
    – Dan D.
    Nov 26, 2013 at 17:15
  • well yes but i want to monitor a lot of information over time and when they all happened at the same time i want to check something. so what i might be doing is looking at 4 separate events , say the price of wheat over 5$ , price of gold over 1200$, if lady gaga tweeted that day, and if the yankees played. I want to look through time and at any points where all things occurred maybe i want to check to see what that time was so i can check if the price of treasury bills went up. Nov 26, 2013 at 18:46

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You could use a stacked column chart with a threshold line and some sort of effect to emphasize when the threshold was reached e.g.

enter image description here

You can add a legend to specify what each color stands for (which variable it is).


BTW, I added an effect to the 2007 and 2008 columns by mistake - ignore them.

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  • +1 , awesome novel to me solution that i didnt think of. thanks ! Nov 26, 2013 at 22:25

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