ImputeViz: A Visual Analytics Dashboard for Diagnosing Missing Data and Comparing Imputation Methods

2026-07-09

AI Summary

Missing data are prevalent in scientific research and public health, often leading to analytical bias and compounded by a lack of effective tools for diagnosing missingness mechanisms and comparing imputation methods. This work proposes a method-agnostic visual analytics dashboard that integrates mainstream imputation techniques—including MICE, random forests, XGBoost, and kNN—and employs coordinated views such as heatmaps, co-missingness summaries, distribution diagnostics, and error metrics (e.g., MAE, RMSE) to facilitate missing pattern recognition, cross-method comparison, and downstream impact analysis. Innovatively, it introduces a geographically and socioeconomically informed gKNN algorithm to enable source-based visual accountability. Case studies demonstrate that the system effectively supports users in selecting imputation strategies, identifying sensitive variables, assessing model robustness, and substantially reducing the cognitive burden associated with switching between methods.

Abstract

Missing data is a persistent obstacle in scientific, social science, and public health research, often biasing analyses and placing accountability on analysts for how they handle missing values. We introduce ImputeViz, an integrated visual analytics dashboard that supports diagnosing missingness, configuring imputation models, and evaluating results. The system brings together widely used methods, including MICE, Random Forest, XGBoost, and kNN, within an interactive environment that makes missingness patterns explicit. To support geospatial reasoning, we introduce gKNN, a geographically informed kNN variant that blends socioeconomic and spatial distances and exposes donor contributions, enabling provenance-based visual accountability by showing which regions drive each estimate. Our primary contribution is a method-agnostic visual analytics environment that makes cross-method comparison a first-class visual task and integrates gKNN alongside standard methods. Coordinated views reveal missingness structure through heatmaps, co-missingness summaries, and distributional diagnostics that help analysts reason about missingness patterns (MCAR/MAR) and cases where missingness may be non-random (MNAR). Users can compare and tune models and interrogate results via distributional overlays, a Method Comparison Summary reporting MAE, RMSE, Delta RMSE, and runtime for each algorithm on the current target and mask, along with variable-level discrepancy views. Cached per-method results and locked axis scales reduce cognitive overhead from shifting ranges during method switching. These comparisons highlight where methods disagree, which variables are sensitive, and how imputation choices affect downstream summaries. Case studies demonstrate how ImputeViz helps analysts select effective strategies, surface sensitive variables, and assess model robustness.

Problem

• missing data
• imputation methods
• visual analytics
• data missingness
• geospatial imputation

Innovation

• visual analytics
• missing data imputation
• gKNN
• method comparison
• geospatial reasoning