Annotations

The Annotations panel in the View Editor provides tools for selecting, grouping, and marking points in your data. Annotations help you identify patterns, create reference points, and organize your exploration.

Accessing the Annotations Panel 

The Annotations panel appears on the right side of the View Editor:

Switch to the View Editor tab
Select a view (projection) to display
The right panel shows View Configuration at the top and Annotations below

Selection Tools 

VectorScope provides interactive tools for selecting points in your visualizations.

Box Selection (Basic)

To select multiple points:

Click and drag on the plot to draw a selection rectangle
All points within the rectangle are selected
Selected points are highlighted in the visualization
The selection count appears in the Annotations panel

Note

Selection is synchronized across all viewports. Points selected in one view are highlighted in all other views showing the same data.

Additive Selection (Shift + Box Select)

To add more points to an existing selection:

Hold the Shift key
Draw another selection rectangle
The new points are added to your existing selection
Repeat to build up a complex selection

This is useful when points you want to select are in multiple regions of the plot.

Point Toggling (Shift + Click)

To add or remove individual points:

Hold the Shift key
Click on a point to toggle its selection state: - If unselected, it becomes selected - If already selected, it becomes unselected

This provides fine-grained control for adjusting selections.

Clear Selection 

To clear all selected points:

Click the Clear Selection button in the Annotations panel, or
Click on an empty area of the plot (no points)

Named Selections 

Named selections let you save groups of points for later use. This is useful for:

Marking clusters or groups you’ve identified
Creating reference sets for comparison
Building selections incrementally across sessions

Saving a Selection 

Select points using the selection tools above
In the Annotations panel, enter a name in the Selection name field
Click Save
The selection appears in the Selections list

Applying a Selection 

To restore a saved selection:

Find the selection in the Selections list
Click Apply
The saved points become selected in the visualization

Note

If some points in the saved selection are no longer in the current view (e.g., after loading different data), only the matching points are selected.

Deleting a Selection 

To remove a saved selection:

Find the selection in the Selections list
Click the x button next to it

Virtual Points (Barycenters)

Virtual points are synthetic points you create to mark important locations in your data. The most common use is creating barycenters (centroids) that represent the center of a group of points.

What is a Barycenter?

A barycenter is the mean position of a set of points. In VectorScope, barycenters are computed in the original high-dimensional space and then projected to 2D/3D along with your data. This means the barycenter represents the true center of the selected points, not just the visual center in the projection.

Creating a Barycenter 

Select the points you want to find the center of
Optionally enter a name in the Barycenter name field
Click + Point
A virtual point appears at the centroid of your selection

The virtual point is displayed with a distinct marker (star shape) and appears in the Virtual Points list.

Naming Barycenters 

Give your barycenters meaningful names to remember what they represent:

“Class A center” - Center of a class
“Cluster 1” - Center of an identified cluster
“Outlier group” - Center of points you’ve marked as outliers

Deleting Virtual Points 

To remove a virtual point:

Find it in the Virtual Points list
Click the x button next to it

Auto-Generate from Classes 

If your dataset has class labels, VectorScope can automatically create selections and barycenters for each class. This provides a quick way to mark and analyze class structure.

Requirements 

This feature appears when:

Your data has class labels (the label field on points)
You’re in the View Editor with a projection loaded

The section shows the number of detected classes and lists them.

Creating Selections for Each Class 

Click the Selections button to:

Create a named selection for each class label
Each selection contains all points with that class label
Selections appear in the Selections list

For example, with the Iris dataset, this creates three selections: “setosa”, “versicolor”, and “virginica”.

Creating Barycenters for Each Class 

Click the Barycenters button to:

Create a virtual point (barycenter) for each class label
Each barycenter is named after its class
Barycenters appear in the Virtual Points list

This is useful for:

Visualizing class centers in the projection
Comparing how far apart different classes are
Creating reference points for custom axis projections (future feature)

Best Practices 

Start with exploration - Use box selection to explore clusters before saving
Use additive selection - Build complex selections incrementally with Shift
Name selections descriptively - Future you will thank present you
Create class barycenters - They help anchor your understanding of the data
Compare across views - Selection syncs across viewports, use this to compare

Workflow Example 

Here’s a typical workflow using annotations:

Load a dataset with class labels (e.g., Iris from sklearn)
Create a PCA view to see the data structure
Auto-generate class barycenters - Click “Barycenters” in Auto-Generate section
Observe class separation - See where class centers are relative to each other
Select interesting points - Use box select to grab points between classes
Save as “borderline cases” - Name and save the selection
Switch to t-SNE view - See how the same selection appears in a different projection
Create a barycenter for your selection to mark the center of borderline cases