Applied Artificial Intelligence Technology for Interactively Using Narrative Analytics to Focus and Control Visualizations of Data

To provide users with more flexibility for focusing and controlling visualizations of data, the inventors disclose new data structures and artificial intelligence logic that can be utilized in conjunction with notional specifications of focus criteria for visualizations. In an example embodiment, the inventors disclose technology that can be used to generate data structures that represent notional characteristics of the visualization data which in turn can be tied to specific elements of the visualization data to support interactive focusing of visualizations in notional terms that correspond to interesting aspects of the data. This allows a user to specify using notional criteria how a visualization should be focused on specific elements without needing to know in advance what those specific elements are.