Graph Drawing In Spherical Geometry

Abstract

Graphs, or networks, are frequently visualized in two dimensions. However, some graphs do not have an ideal representation in two dimensions due to their inherent structure. In this paper, we discuss two distinct approaches for visualizing graphs in spherical geometry. We consider a projection-based method reliant on mathematics often seen in cartography, and present a working browser-based implementation of these ideas which exists as an additional feature of the GMap graph drawing tool. We then consider spherical multidimensional scaling as an alternative, which is commonly used as a dimensionality reduction technique. We explore its effectiveness as a graph embedder in spherical space, and present a series of graph drawings illustrating a working implementation.