Abstract: Over the last two decade there has been a revolution in cognitive neuroscience which is referred to under the label ?predictive cognition?. According to this theory, at every level of brain activity, predictions are being constructed and tested against outcomes occurring through interaction with the external world. At the highest level this has profound implications for episodic memory and for the need for storytelling in presenting data. Episodic memory is the term Endel Tulving coined in the 1970s to describe the kinds of memories we have about episodes in our past and this is the basis of storytelling. According to the predictive cognition theory, the mechanisms of episodic memory are the same as mechanisms for mental model building, and mental model building is, or should be, the goal of storytelling with data. This talk will give examples of storytelling with data, with an accompanying meta-narrative relating to predictive cognition.

Short Bio: Colin Ware has a special interest in applying theories of perception to the design of data visualizations. He has advanced degrees in both computer science (MMath, Waterloo) and in the psychology of perception (PhD, Toronto). He has published over 170 articles ranging from rigorously scientific contributions to the Journal of Physiology, Behavior and Vision Research to application-oriented articles in the fields of data visualization and human-computer interaction. His book Information Visualization: Perception for Design is now in its third edition. His book, Visual Thinking for Design, appeared in 2008. Ware also likes to build practical visualization systems. Fledermaus, a commercial 3D geospatial visualization system widely used in oceanography, was developed from his initial prototypes. His trackPlot software is being used by marine mammal scientists and his flowVis2D software is serving images on NOAA websites. Colin Ware is Director of the Data Visualization Research Lab which is part of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.