StackSymbol is a location intelligence software. It plots your data on map. It helps you
visually see:
o where
o how many
o what
about your data.
StackSymbol software runs under Windows®. It takes your data (almost any data) as input, and produces a KMZ* file as output. You can display the KMZ file in Google Earth® (the default display), Google Maps®, Bing®, ArcGIS Explorer®, World Wind®, and other web-based mapping platform.
To help you visually see "where" about your data:
o StackSymbol plots one or more symbols at each location that is mentioned in your data.
o It plots the symbols on earth or map, hence you can identify where
the locations are.
o If your data contain latitudes and longitudes, it uses them to plot
the symbols on earth or on map.
o If you data contain other location information
(such as address, street, distance/direction/angle, city, state, country, etc.), it first geocodes or converts the location
information into latitudes and longitudes, and then uses the converted latitudes
and longitudes to plot symbols on earth or on map.
o If your location information are in codes or mile points, it allows
you to supply lookup tables to translate the codes or mile points into regular location descriptions. It then converts (or geocodes) the descriptions into latitudes and
longitudes, and then plot symbols
on earth or on map.
o If your location information are accurate to address and house
level, it will plot symbols at locations to the address and house level. If your
location information are accurate to city/state/country level, it will plot
symbols at locations in or near the centroid area of city/state/country.
To help you visually see "how many" about your data:
o StackSymbol plots one or more symbols at each location that is mentioned in your
data.
o The number of symbols to be plotted at a location is proportional
to "how many" at each location in your data.
o If a location has two or more symbols, it stacks the symbols up at
that location, creating a three-dimensional view.
o In other words, it plots a stack of symbols at each location, and
the number of symbols within a stack is proportional to "how many"
at each location in your data.
o The location with the highest stack of symbols means that location has the highest
quantity.
o Because you can visually see symbols stacking up with different heights, hence it helps you see
"how many" about your data.
To help you visually see "what" about your data:
o "What" may refer to (a) the values,
categories, codes, descriptions, etc. in the data, (b) the detail contents of the data, and (c) what is related to the data.
o StackSymbol allows you to assign different shape, color and/or size of symbols to denote different values,
categories, codes, and/or descriptions in your data. When it goes through the data during plotting, if it encounters different
values, categories, codes and/or descriptions, it will use different symbols
(shapes, colors and/or sizes) accordingly to plot them.
o Each plotted symbol is linked to the record or row of the original
data. When you click a plotted symbol, it displays the field names and
field contents of a record (or the column names and column contents of a row) from your original data. Hence you can see the details of
your data.
o Because StackSymbol is a browser application, you can use HTML tags to add links to your data. As a result, you can link your data to related information in the outside world.
To further help you visually see "how many" about your data, StackSymbol has two type of plots: StackSymbol FreqPlot and StackSymbol ValuePlot. The paragraphs below describe them in more
details.
If you are interested in seeing the number of times occurring (or frequency) at each location (regardless whether your data have numeric values), you can use "StackSymbol FreqPlot" to help you see "how many" about your data.
This type of data are usually in the form of a database. Database type of data contain records (or rows) and fields (columns). To
indicate "where", one or more fields (or columns) contain location
information. To indicate "how many" at a location , one needs to know
the number of times occurring at that location. That is, how frequent occurring at a location. (Note that the record
itself does not need to contain numeric values, it is the number of times occurring that
accounts for "how many".) If your data are this type, StackSymbol helps
you see "how many" about your data as follows:
o It uses "StackSymbol FreqPlot" to plot your data.
o It automatically performs frequency count for you, by counting how many times per location.
o It plots one or more symbols at each location that is mentioned in your
data.
o The number of symbols to be plotted at a location is proportional
to the frequency at that location.
o If a location has two or more symbols, it stacks the symbols up at
that location, creating a three-dimensional view.
o The location with the highest stack of symbols means that that location has the highest
frequency.
If you are interested in seeing the numeric value at each location, you can use "StackSymbol ValuePlot" to visually see "how many" about your data. This type of data is usually in
the form of a summary table. In a summary table, there are rows and columns. The rows
usually contain location information while the columns usually contain
numeric values to reflect "how many" at each location; or vice
versa. If your data are such type, StackSymbol helps you see "how many" about your data as follows:
o It uses "StackSymbol ValuePlot" to plot your data.
o It plots one or more symbols at each location that is mentioned in your
data.
o The number of symbols to be plotted at a location is proportional
to the numeric value at each location in your data.
o If a location has two or more symbols, it stacks the symbols up at
that location, creating a three-dimensional view.
o The location with the highest stack of symbols means that that location has the highest
numeric value.
o You can assign a value each symbol represents.
o The number of symbols to be plotted at a location is equal
to the numeric value at that location divided by the assigned value each symbol represents. (It equals one if the quotient is less than one. It ignores the fraction if the quotient is greater than one.)
o For example, if CityA has a population of 100,000 persons and if each symbol represents 5,000 persons,
then it will plot a stack with 20 symbols at CityA, because 100,000 divided by 5,000 equals 20.
To further help you visually see "what" about your data:
o When clicking a plotted symbol, it displays all the field names and field contents of a record (or all column names and column contents of a row), as default. However, you may choose to display any, all or none of them. This allows you to filter out sensitive information.
o You can generate multiple plots, each plot has different "what"
by choosing different field or column to be plotted with symbols. Then display
all plots on the same earth or map so you can see many types of
"what" at the same time.
o If the location in each of the multiple
plots refers to the same location, the software allows you to adjust the
location by certain distance from its original position such that the same
location from multiple plots will not overlap each other.
The above descriptions show that StackSymbol can help you see
"where", "how many" and "what" about your
data. StackSymbol is developed by JMW Engineering, Inc. It is based on US Patent
6104410, "Method And Apparatus For Displaying Stacked Symbols To Create A
Multi-Dimensional View."
*The Open Geospatial Consortium has adapted KML and KMZ (formerly Keyhole Markup Language) as a standard language for "expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future web-based online and mobile maps (2d) and earth browsers (3d)". KMZ is the same as KML, but in a compressed form.