Mauro Martino | Harvard University (original) (raw)

Papers by Mauro Martino

Scientific Reports

We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by an... more We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by analysing a dataset of 3.7M transactions collected between January 2018 and June 2022, involving 1.4M NFTs distributed across 410 collections. First, we consider the rarity of an NFT based on the set of human-readable attributes it possesses and show that most collections present heterogeneous rarity patterns, with few rare NFTs and a large number of more common ones. Then, we analyze market performance and show that, on average, rarer NFTs: (i) sell for higher prices, (ii) are traded less frequently, (iii) guarantee higher returns on investment, and (iv) are less risky, i.e., less prone to yield negative returns. We anticipate that these findings will be of interest to researchers as well as NFT creators, collectors, and traders.

ArXiv, 2022

We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by an... more We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by analysing a dataset of 3.7M transactions collected between January 2018 and March 2022, involving 1.3M NFTs distributed across 410 collections. First, we consider the rarity of an NFT based on the set of human-readable attributes it possesses and show that most collections present heterogeneous rarity patterns, with few rare NFTs and a large number of more common ones. Then, we analyse market performance and show that, on average, rarer NFTs: (i) sell for higher prices, (ii) are traded less frequently, (iii) guarantee higher returns on investment (ROIs), and (iv) are less risky, i.e., less prone to yield negative returns. We anticipate that these findings will be of interest to researchers as well as NFT creators, collectors, and traders.

nodes are diseases connected if they have common genetic origin. Published as a supplement of the... more nodes are diseases connected if they have common genetic origin. Published as a supplement of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1], the map was created to illustrate the genetic interconnectedness of apparently dis-tinct diseases. With time it crossed dis-ciplinary boundaries, taking up a life of its own. The New York Times created an interactive version of the map and the London-based Serpentine Gallery, one of the top contemporary art galleries in the world, have exhibited it part of their focus on networks and maps [2]. It is also featured in numerous books on design and maps [3, 4, 5]. Figure 2.0 (front cover)

It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Giv... more It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the ex-tent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republi-can Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949–2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives...

We introduce S&P360, a system to analyse and explore multidimensional, online data related to com... more We introduce S&P360, a system to analyse and explore multidimensional, online data related to companies, their financial news, and the social impact of them. Our system combines official and crowd-sourced data sources to offer a broad perspective on the impact of financial newsregarding a set of companies. Our

ArXiv, 2020

In Marius von Senden’s Space and Sight, a newly sighted blind patient1 describes the experience o... more In Marius von Senden’s Space and Sight, a newly sighted blind patient1 describes the experience of a corner as lemon-like, because corners “prick” sight like lemons prick the tongue [9]. Prickliness, here, is a dimension in the feature space of sensory experience, an effect of the perceived on the perceiver that arises where the two interact. In the account of the newly sighted, an effect familiar from one interaction translates to a novel context. Perception serves as the vehicle for generalization, in that an effect shared across different experiences produces a concrete abstraction [3] grounded in those experiences. Cezanne and the post-impressionists, fluent in the language of experience translation, realized that the way to paint a concrete form that best reflected reality was to paint not what they saw, but what it was like to see [7]. We envision a future of creation using AI where what it is like to see is replicable, transferrable, manipulable – part of the artist’s palette...

ArXiv, 2020

We introduce a multi-modal discriminative and generative frame-work capable of assisting humans i... more We introduce a multi-modal discriminative and generative frame-work capable of assisting humans in producing visual content re-lated to a given theme, starting from a collection of documents(textual, visual, or both). This framework can be used by edit or to generate images for articles, as well as books or music album covers. Motivated by a request from the The New York Times (NYT) seeking help to use AI to create art for their special section on Artificial Intelligence, we demonstrated the application of our system in producing such image.

ArXiv, 2021

Storytelling is an open-ended task that entails creative thinking and requires a constant flow of... more Storytelling is an open-ended task that entails creative thinking and requires a constant flow of ideas. Natural language generation (NLG) for storytelling is especially challenging because it requires the generated text to follow an overall theme while remaining creative and diverse to engage the reader. In this work, we introduce a system and a web-based demo, FairyTailor1, for human-in-the-loop visual story co-creation. Users can create a cohesive children’s fairytale by weaving generated texts and retrieved images with their input. FairyTailor adds another modality and modifies the text generation process to produce a coherent and creative sequence of text and images. To our knowledge, this is the first dynamic tool for multimodal story generation that allows interactive coformation of both texts and images. It allows users to give feedback on co-created stories and share their results. We release the demo source code2 for other researchers’ use.

Scientific Reports, 2021

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and i... more Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and in-game items. They are traded online, often with cryptocurrency, and are generally encoded within smart contracts on a blockchain. Public attention towards NFTs has exploded in 2021, when their market has experienced record sales, but little is known about the overall structure and evolution of its market. Here, we analyse data concerning 6.1 million trades of 4.7 million NFTs between June 23, 2017 and April 27, 2021, obtained primarily from Ethereum and WAX blockchains. First, we characterize statistical properties of the market. Second, we build the network of interactions, show that traders typically specialize on NFTs associated with similar objects and form tight clusters with other traders that exchange the same kind of objects. Third, we cluster objects associated to NFTs according to their visual features and show that collections contain visually homogeneous objects. Finally, we...

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2017, 2017

Many multimedia visualizations abstract the underlying content into aggregate displays, requiring... more Many multimedia visualizations abstract the underlying content into aggregate displays, requiring user interaction in order to expose the original text, images or video. The drawback of this approach is that unlike traditional, numerical data, multimedia data is readily interpretable. Users can catch an image or phrase out of the corner of their eye an immediately understand the content. However, this passive discovery cannot take place when content is only exposed through direct interaction. In this paper, we present the Panta Rhei, a peripheral display designed to avoid this pitfall by surfacing original content when the user is not actively engaged with the application. We provide the full implementation details, including the many ways in which the underlying parameters can be tuned to suit various objectives. Since the display can easily support text, images or videos, our goal is to enable more widespread discussion and experimentation involving this technique for multimedia visualization.

Leonardo, 2020

VISAP'16 presented the Metamorphoses exhibition, featuring artists and designers who investigate ... more VISAP'16 presented the Metamorphoses exhibition, featuring artists and designers who investigate how data is transformed into interpretable artifacts and how experience is transmuted into meaning. Additionally, VISAP '16 included a series of artist talks, peer-reviewed paper presentations and a panel discussion on the topic of Critical Visualization, which fea

IBM Journal of Research and Development, 2015

Analyzing network data can provide valuable insights in many diverse fields. However, designing n... more Analyzing network data can provide valuable insights in many diverse fields. However, designing node-link visualizations that effectively communicate the underlying network is challenging, as for every network there are many potential unintelligible or even misleading layouts. Automated layout algorithms have helped, but frequently generate ineffective visualizations. In order to build awareness of effective node-link visualization strategies, we detail new global readability metrics on a [0,1] continuous scale for node-node overlap, edge crossing angle, angular resolution, group overlap, and visualization coverage. In addition, we define novel node-and-edge readability metrics to provide more localized identification of where improvement is needed. We describe the trade-offs inherent in optimizing individual metrics as well as recommend metric optimizations for particular tasks. Our metrics are implemented in a JavaScript A API (application programming interface) to make them widely available to designers of web-based visualization tools, who can use metrics to direct users towards poor areas of the drawing. Our prototype system using the API aims to help designers and theorists evaluate and compare their layouts.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Existing technologies for transportation planning, urban design, and decision-making have not kep... more Existing technologies for transportation planning, urban design, and decision-making have not kept pace with rapid urbanization. Visualization and analysis tools can help by combining qualitative, quantitative, and historical urban data – helping experts understand the system of systems of the modern city. Incorporating insights from experts in several relevant fields, we have derived a performance specification for visualization tools supporting general transportation planning problems . We examine two existing technologies against the specification – Betaville and StoryFacets – and recommend adapting them as first-generation urban system analysis/planning support tools. We also suggest guidelines for the next generation of tools for transportation planning.

Proceedings of the 15th International Conference, Feb 7, 2010

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015

Epidemiologists struggle to integrate complex information about the incidence and spread of disea... more Epidemiologists struggle to integrate complex information about the incidence and spread of disease, in relation to population density and other demographic conditions, at geographical scales ranging from global air travel down to local commuting. A partial solution overlays air travel as arcs above color-coded maps. However, commuting is not shown and it is often challenging to understand changing relationships due to the visual complexity arcs introduce. Moreover, when region sizes and shapes vary their color-codings become difficult to perceive. We introduce three visualizations which combine representations of population, movement, and disease spread at a local scale that is consistent with a zoomable global scale: (1) a map with commuting border encodings, (2) a centroidal Voronoi tessellation morphing technique, and (3) a meta-layout showing commuting alongside air travel. Our work provides mid-level abstractions that expert epidemiologists can use for insights into contagion.

PLOS ONE, 2015

It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Giv... more It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the extent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republican Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949-2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives continue to cooperate across party lines despite growing partisanship.

Scientific Reports

We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by an... more We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by analysing a dataset of 3.7M transactions collected between January 2018 and June 2022, involving 1.4M NFTs distributed across 410 collections. First, we consider the rarity of an NFT based on the set of human-readable attributes it possesses and show that most collections present heterogeneous rarity patterns, with few rare NFTs and a large number of more common ones. Then, we analyze market performance and show that, on average, rarer NFTs: (i) sell for higher prices, (ii) are traded less frequently, (iii) guarantee higher returns on investment, and (iv) are less risky, i.e., less prone to yield negative returns. We anticipate that these findings will be of interest to researchers as well as NFT creators, collectors, and traders.

ArXiv, 2022

We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by an... more We quantify Non Fungible Token (NFT) rarity and investigate how it impacts market behaviour by analysing a dataset of 3.7M transactions collected between January 2018 and March 2022, involving 1.3M NFTs distributed across 410 collections. First, we consider the rarity of an NFT based on the set of human-readable attributes it possesses and show that most collections present heterogeneous rarity patterns, with few rare NFTs and a large number of more common ones. Then, we analyse market performance and show that, on average, rarer NFTs: (i) sell for higher prices, (ii) are traded less frequently, (iii) guarantee higher returns on investment (ROIs), and (iv) are less risky, i.e., less prone to yield negative returns. We anticipate that these findings will be of interest to researchers as well as NFT creators, collectors, and traders.

nodes are diseases connected if they have common genetic origin. Published as a supplement of the... more nodes are diseases connected if they have common genetic origin. Published as a supplement of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1], the map was created to illustrate the genetic interconnectedness of apparently dis-tinct diseases. With time it crossed dis-ciplinary boundaries, taking up a life of its own. The New York Times created an interactive version of the map and the London-based Serpentine Gallery, one of the top contemporary art galleries in the world, have exhibited it part of their focus on networks and maps [2]. It is also featured in numerous books on design and maps [3, 4, 5]. Figure 2.0 (front cover)

It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Giv... more It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the ex-tent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republi-can Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949–2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives...

We introduce S&P360, a system to analyse and explore multidimensional, online data related to com... more We introduce S&P360, a system to analyse and explore multidimensional, online data related to companies, their financial news, and the social impact of them. Our system combines official and crowd-sourced data sources to offer a broad perspective on the impact of financial newsregarding a set of companies. Our

ArXiv, 2020

In Marius von Senden’s Space and Sight, a newly sighted blind patient1 describes the experience o... more In Marius von Senden’s Space and Sight, a newly sighted blind patient1 describes the experience of a corner as lemon-like, because corners “prick” sight like lemons prick the tongue [9]. Prickliness, here, is a dimension in the feature space of sensory experience, an effect of the perceived on the perceiver that arises where the two interact. In the account of the newly sighted, an effect familiar from one interaction translates to a novel context. Perception serves as the vehicle for generalization, in that an effect shared across different experiences produces a concrete abstraction [3] grounded in those experiences. Cezanne and the post-impressionists, fluent in the language of experience translation, realized that the way to paint a concrete form that best reflected reality was to paint not what they saw, but what it was like to see [7]. We envision a future of creation using AI where what it is like to see is replicable, transferrable, manipulable – part of the artist’s palette...

ArXiv, 2020

We introduce a multi-modal discriminative and generative frame-work capable of assisting humans i... more We introduce a multi-modal discriminative and generative frame-work capable of assisting humans in producing visual content re-lated to a given theme, starting from a collection of documents(textual, visual, or both). This framework can be used by edit or to generate images for articles, as well as books or music album covers. Motivated by a request from the The New York Times (NYT) seeking help to use AI to create art for their special section on Artificial Intelligence, we demonstrated the application of our system in producing such image.

ArXiv, 2021

Storytelling is an open-ended task that entails creative thinking and requires a constant flow of... more Storytelling is an open-ended task that entails creative thinking and requires a constant flow of ideas. Natural language generation (NLG) for storytelling is especially challenging because it requires the generated text to follow an overall theme while remaining creative and diverse to engage the reader. In this work, we introduce a system and a web-based demo, FairyTailor1, for human-in-the-loop visual story co-creation. Users can create a cohesive children’s fairytale by weaving generated texts and retrieved images with their input. FairyTailor adds another modality and modifies the text generation process to produce a coherent and creative sequence of text and images. To our knowledge, this is the first dynamic tool for multimodal story generation that allows interactive coformation of both texts and images. It allows users to give feedback on co-created stories and share their results. We release the demo source code2 for other researchers’ use.

Scientific Reports, 2021

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and i... more Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and in-game items. They are traded online, often with cryptocurrency, and are generally encoded within smart contracts on a blockchain. Public attention towards NFTs has exploded in 2021, when their market has experienced record sales, but little is known about the overall structure and evolution of its market. Here, we analyse data concerning 6.1 million trades of 4.7 million NFTs between June 23, 2017 and April 27, 2021, obtained primarily from Ethereum and WAX blockchains. First, we characterize statistical properties of the market. Second, we build the network of interactions, show that traders typically specialize on NFTs associated with similar objects and form tight clusters with other traders that exchange the same kind of objects. Third, we cluster objects associated to NFTs according to their visual features and show that collections contain visually homogeneous objects. Finally, we...

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2017, 2017

Many multimedia visualizations abstract the underlying content into aggregate displays, requiring... more Many multimedia visualizations abstract the underlying content into aggregate displays, requiring user interaction in order to expose the original text, images or video. The drawback of this approach is that unlike traditional, numerical data, multimedia data is readily interpretable. Users can catch an image or phrase out of the corner of their eye an immediately understand the content. However, this passive discovery cannot take place when content is only exposed through direct interaction. In this paper, we present the Panta Rhei, a peripheral display designed to avoid this pitfall by surfacing original content when the user is not actively engaged with the application. We provide the full implementation details, including the many ways in which the underlying parameters can be tuned to suit various objectives. Since the display can easily support text, images or videos, our goal is to enable more widespread discussion and experimentation involving this technique for multimedia visualization.

Leonardo, 2020

VISAP'16 presented the Metamorphoses exhibition, featuring artists and designers who investigate ... more VISAP'16 presented the Metamorphoses exhibition, featuring artists and designers who investigate how data is transformed into interpretable artifacts and how experience is transmuted into meaning. Additionally, VISAP '16 included a series of artist talks, peer-reviewed paper presentations and a panel discussion on the topic of Critical Visualization, which fea

IBM Journal of Research and Development, 2015

Analyzing network data can provide valuable insights in many diverse fields. However, designing n... more Analyzing network data can provide valuable insights in many diverse fields. However, designing node-link visualizations that effectively communicate the underlying network is challenging, as for every network there are many potential unintelligible or even misleading layouts. Automated layout algorithms have helped, but frequently generate ineffective visualizations. In order to build awareness of effective node-link visualization strategies, we detail new global readability metrics on a [0,1] continuous scale for node-node overlap, edge crossing angle, angular resolution, group overlap, and visualization coverage. In addition, we define novel node-and-edge readability metrics to provide more localized identification of where improvement is needed. We describe the trade-offs inherent in optimizing individual metrics as well as recommend metric optimizations for particular tasks. Our metrics are implemented in a JavaScript A API (application programming interface) to make them widely available to designers of web-based visualization tools, who can use metrics to direct users towards poor areas of the drawing. Our prototype system using the API aims to help designers and theorists evaluate and compare their layouts.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Existing technologies for transportation planning, urban design, and decision-making have not kep... more Existing technologies for transportation planning, urban design, and decision-making have not kept pace with rapid urbanization. Visualization and analysis tools can help by combining qualitative, quantitative, and historical urban data – helping experts understand the system of systems of the modern city. Incorporating insights from experts in several relevant fields, we have derived a performance specification for visualization tools supporting general transportation planning problems . We examine two existing technologies against the specification – Betaville and StoryFacets – and recommend adapting them as first-generation urban system analysis/planning support tools. We also suggest guidelines for the next generation of tools for transportation planning.

Proceedings of the 15th International Conference, Feb 7, 2010

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015

Epidemiologists struggle to integrate complex information about the incidence and spread of disea... more Epidemiologists struggle to integrate complex information about the incidence and spread of disease, in relation to population density and other demographic conditions, at geographical scales ranging from global air travel down to local commuting. A partial solution overlays air travel as arcs above color-coded maps. However, commuting is not shown and it is often challenging to understand changing relationships due to the visual complexity arcs introduce. Moreover, when region sizes and shapes vary their color-codings become difficult to perceive. We introduce three visualizations which combine representations of population, movement, and disease spread at a local scale that is consistent with a zoomable global scale: (1) a map with commuting border encodings, (2) a centroidal Voronoi tessellation morphing technique, and (3) a meta-layout showing commuting alongside air travel. Our work provides mid-level abstractions that expert epidemiologists can use for insights into contagion.

PLOS ONE, 2015

It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Giv... more It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the extent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republican Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949-2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives continue to cooperate across party lines despite growing partisanship.