The Turing Test for Graph Drawing Algorithms

Abstract: Do algorithms for drawing graphs pass the Turing Test? That is, are their outputs indistinguishable from graphs drawn by humans? We address this question through a human-centred experiment, focusing on `small' graphs, of a size for which it would be reasonable for someone to choose to draw the graph manually. Overall, we find that hand-drawn layouts can be distinguished from those generated by graph drawing algorithms, although this is not always the case for graphs drawn by force-directed or multi-dimensional scaling algorithms, making these good candidates for Turing Test success. We show that, in general, hand-drawn graphs are judged to be of higher quality than automatically generated ones, although this result varies with graph size and algorithm.