Patent US 6,629,097

A system for discerning and displaying relational structure and conceptual similarities among items in a target group of data items. Root terms are extracted from descriptions of the data items, and are used to generate similarity measures among all data items in the group. The invention uses a combination of mathematical operations to transform the similarity measures into Euclidean coordinates such that all data items and all root terms can be simultaneously plotted as visual objects in a computer-simulated three-dimensional space. Interpoint distances between data objects and root term objects correspond to the measures of associative similarity between those points. Three-dimensional graphics and movement simulation allow the data display to be presented and viewed from an unlimited number of perspectives. Users can access detailed information about displayed data items, including hyperlinks and URL links which serve to connect the user immediately to the original data sources represented by is objects in the visual plot. The invention can be applied across a broad range of circumstances in which surfacing of the implicit conceptual and relational structure among a group of data items is desired.