This love loves love. It's a strange love, strange love.find a way to lovemore quotes

# e: worthwhile

The Outbreak Poems — artistic emissions in a pandemic

# visualization + design

Typography geek? If you like the geometry and mathematics of these posters, you may enjoy something more letter ed. Visions of type: Type Peep Show: The Private Curves of Letters posters.

# The art of Pi ($pi$), Phi ($phi$) and $e$

This section contains various art work based on $\pi$, $\phi$ and $e$ that I created over the years. $pi$ day and $pi$ approximation day artwork is kept separate.

The accidental similarity number (ASN) is a kind of overlap between numbers. I came up with this concept after creating typographical art about the $i$-ness of $\pi$.

To construct the accidental similarity number (ASN) for three numbers $\pi$, $\phi$ and $e$, we first align these numbers and then identify positions for which the numbers have the same digit.

$π φ e$
$3.1415926535897932 … 21170679821 … 10270193852 … 1.6180339887498948 … 93911374847 … 08659593958 … 2.7182818284590452 … 51664274274 … 32862794349 …$

These digits are then used to create the accidental similarity number. In this case,

$ASN(π, φ, e) = 0.97911 48920 55221 …$

By definition, the decimal is held in place.

The posters of $asn(pi,phi,e)$ show the accidental similarity number created from the first 1,000,000 digits of each number. The numbers have the same digit at 9,997 positions.

The poster shows 9,996 ASN digits (last one is omitted) because I use the distance between the index of the digits that make up the ASN for the color mapping.

The distribution of distances follows a Poisson distribution with an average of 100, with about 1-1/$e$ values being smaller than 100.

The font is Neutraface Slab Display Medium.

## properties of the accidental similarity number

Any properties are accidental, but curiously ASN($\pi$,$\phi$,$e$) ≈ 1.

If you find other curiously accidental properties, let me know.

## data files

Download the first 9,997 digits of the accidental similarity number. This file provides the ASN digit index, $i$, the digit, $ASN_i$ and the position from which it is sampled, $\text{index}(ASN_i)$.

$i ASN_i index(ASN_i) 0 9 13 1 7 100 2 9 170 3 1 396 # e.g. 4th ASN digit is 1, sampled from digit index 396 4 1 500 5 4 596 6 8 607 7 9 694 8 2 825 9 0 828 10 5 841 11 5 941 12 2 1283 ...$

# The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics

Thu 18-06-2020

Realistic models of epidemics account for latency, loss of immunity, births and deaths.

We continue with our discussion about epidemic models and show how births, deaths and loss of immunity can create epidemic waves—a periodic fluctuation in the fraction of population that is infected.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics. (read)

This column has an interactive supplemental component (download code) that allows you to explore epidemic waves and introduces the idea of the phase plane, a compact way to understand the evolution of an epidemic over its entire course.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics. (Interactive supplemental materials)

Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics. Nature Methods 17:557–558.

### Background reading

Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Modeling infectious epidemics. Nature Methods 17:455–456.

# Gene Machines

Fri 05-06-2020

Shifting soundscapes, textures and rhythmic loops produced by laboratory machines.

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, Segue was commissioned to create an original composition based on audio recordings from the GSC's laboratory equipment, robots and computers—to make “music” from the noise they produce.

Gene Machines by Segue. Now available on vinyl.

# Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread

Mon 01-06-2020

Genetic sequences of the coronavirus tell story of when the virus arrived in each country and where it came from.

Our graphic in Scientific American's Graphic Science section in the June 2020 issue shows a phylogenetic tree based on a snapshot of the data model from Nextstrain as of 31 March 2020.

Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread. Text by Mark Fischetti (Senior Editor), art direction by Jen Christiansen (Senior Graphics Editor), source: Nextstrain (enabled by data from GISAID).

# Cover of Nature Cancer April 2020

Mon 27-04-2020

Our design on the cover of Nature Cancer's April 2020 issue shows mutation spectra of patients from the POG570 cohort of 570 individuals with advanced metastatic cancer.

Each ellipse system represents the mutation spectrum of an individual patient. Individual ellipses in the system correspond to the number of base changes in a given class and are layered by mutation count. Ellipse angle is controlled by the proportion of mutations in a class within the sample and its size is determined by a sigmoid mapping of mutation count scaled within the layer. The opacity of each system represents the duration since the diagnosis of advanced disease. (read more)

The cover design accompanies our report in the issue Pleasance, E., Titmuss, E., Williamson, L. et al. (2020) Pan-cancer analysis of advanced patient tumors reveals interactions between therapy and genomic landscapes. Nat Cancer 1:452–468.