IExplore: Accelerating exploratory data analysis by predicting user intention

Abstract

Exploratory data analysis over large datasets has become an increasingly prevalent use case. However, users are easily overwhelmed by the data and might take a long time to find interesting facts. In this paper, we design a system called iExplore to assist users in doing this time-consuming data exploration task through predicting user intention. Moreover, we propose an intention model to help the iExplore system have a comprehensive understanding of user’s intention. Thus, the exploratory process can be accelerated by the intention-driven recommendation and prefetching mechanisms. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the intention-driven iExplore system can significantly lighten the burden of users and facilitate the exploratory process.