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In this article, a way to demonstrate the underlying superiority of three-dimensional, with respect to two-dimensional, representation is proposed. Specifically, it is based on the inevitable quality degradation produced when reducing the data dimensionality. The problem is tackled from two different approaches: a visual and an analytical approach. First, a set of statistical tests (point classification, distance perception, and outlier identification) using the two-dimensional and three-dimensional visualization are carried out on a group of 40 users. The results indicate that there is an improvement in the accuracy introduced by the inclusion of a third dimension; however, these results do not allow to obtain definitive conclusions on the superiority of three-dimensional representation. Therefore, in order to draw further conclusions, a deeper study based on an analytical approach is proposed. The aim is to quantify the real loss of quality produced when the data are visualized in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces, in relation to the original data dimensionality, to analyze the difference between them. To achieve this, a recently proposed methodology is used. The results obtained by the analytical approach reported that the loss of quality reaches significantly high values only when switching from three-dimensional to two-dimensional representation. The considerable quality degradation suffered in the two-dimensional visualization strongly suggests the suitability of the third dimension to visualize data. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1473871614556393","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2014,11,13]],"date-time":"2014-11-13T04:08:35Z","timestamp":1415851715000},"page":"3-30","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":28,"title":["New insights into the suitability of the third dimension for visualizing multivariate\/multidimensional data: A study based on loss of quality quantification"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Antonio","family":"Gracia","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Facultad de Inform\u00e1tica, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"Santiago","family":"Gonz\u00e1lez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facultad de Inform\u00e1tica, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"V\u00edctor","family":"Robles","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facultad de Inform\u00e1tica, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"Ernestina","family":"Menasalvas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facultad de Inform\u00e1tica, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"Tatiana","family":"von Landesberger","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Technische Universit\u00e4t Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2014,11,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-1473871614556393","first-page":"47","volume-title":"Information visualization in data mining and knowledge discovery","author":"Hoffman PE","year":"2002"},{"key":"bibr2-1473871614556393","first-page":"3","volume-title":"Scientific Visualization, Overviews, Methodologies, and Techniques","author":"Wong PC"},{"key":"bibr3-1473871614556393","volume-title":"A model-based visualization taxonomy","author":"Tory M","year":"2002"},{"key":"bibr4-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/2945.841121"},{"key":"bibr5-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/2945.981847"},{"key":"bibr6-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/69.553159"},{"key":"bibr7-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/00949657508810123"},{"issue":"4","key":"bibr8-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"323","DOI":"10.1080\/10618600.1994.10474649","volume":"3","author":"Furnas GW","year":"1994","journal-title":"J Comput Graph Stat"},{"key":"bibr9-1473871614556393","first-page":"65","volume":"13","author":"Tweedie L","year":"1998","journal-title":"Computation Stat"},{"key":"bibr10-1473871614556393","first-page":"119","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 4th conference on Visualization \u201993 (VIS \u201993)","author":"Van Wijk JJ"},{"key":"bibr11-1473871614556393","first-page":"74","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS \u201996)","author":"Wong PC"},{"key":"bibr12-1473871614556393","first-page":"133","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Visualization \u201991 (VIS \u201991)","author":"Alpern B"},{"key":"bibr13-1473871614556393","first-page":"100","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE symposium on information visualization (INFOVIS \u201997)","author":"Inselberg A"},{"key":"bibr14-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/BF01898350"},{"key":"bibr15-1473871614556393","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2528964"},{"key":"bibr16-1473871614556393","unstructured":"Hoffman PE. 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