resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
biography · poster · CV
SPP / Cambridge, UK / Nov 2019
Staff Scientist
Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at BC Cancer
570 W 7th Avenue
Vancouver BC
V5Z 4S6 Canada
martink@bcgsc.ca
@mkrzywinski
activities
With some very smart people, I work on problems in data visualization applied to cancer research and genome analysis. Previously I was involved in fingerprint mapping, system administration, computer security, fashion photography, medical imaging and LHC particle physics. My work is guided by a need to rationalize, make things pretty, combine science with art, mince words, find good questions, help make connections between ideas and explain complicated things. All while exercising snark.
fun + amusement
Dummer - Like Nothing Else / A Hummer Satire
The Dummer project might give you the impression that I don't like Hummers. You'd be right.
The project was well received by The New York Times and very poorly by someone who felt sending me hate mail was a good idea. It was — I loved it.
Other Hummer satires include fuh2.com — there's some hope for us all.
The World's Most Popular Questions
What are the world's most popular questions? After all, what we know defines us as much as what we ask. So, let's look at who we are.
Using Google's autocomplete feature, which suggests the most similar searches to the one you have entered, I maintain a real-time compilation of the most common questions asked by millions of worldwide internet users.
This project (a) yields insight into the zeitgeist and (b) scares me. My reason for fright are questions such as these:
General Issues
How do people do extreme couponing?
Why can't I hold all these limes?
Why do I always feel like murdering everyone?
What's up with the World
Is the world really flat?
is the world being controlled by aliens?
Limits & Desires
What happens if I make a formal commitment to Satan?
Love & Heart
Why is my boyfriend so insecure?
Why is my girlfriend so emotional?
Health
My head is full of pretty lumps.
Pain & Suffering
my elbow is dark and dry
why do I continue to hit myself with a hammer?
when does my head stop growing?
Sizes & Extremes
Who is the most powerful Jedi?
Where is the hardest part of your head?
Religion & Faith
Can Jesus microwave a burrito?
Can I pray with my eyes open?
Should I pray for a husband?
Neologisms - New Words, Much Needed
I like words. The pleasure of effectively using acerebral and defenestrate in the same sentence cannot be understated.
On occassion I found myself in a situation where no word fit, existing or that I know about. Instead of rushing to the dictionary, I decided to make up my own, such as inconversible (a statement without a logical converse), mystific (unexplainably wonderful), postpetizer (course ordered after dessert), prenopsis (a summary of something formulated before it was experienced), suscitate (breathe life into, for the first time), and others.
The current list of my neologisms is circos plot, compure, culturally inconversible, dependers, ee spammings, existangsty, fezday, hilbertonian, hive panel, hive plot, inconversible, metaomome, mystific, naytheism, naytheist, nes, neuroterror, neuroterrorism, newgrade, noward, nonposter, oldgrade, omome, omeomics, omicsophy, over, piddle, port knocking, postpetizer, pregratulate, prekfast, prenopsis, prepetizer, quinty, ratio hive, spammings, suscitate, unappropriate .
HDTR: High Dynamic Time Range Photography - Visualizing the Flow of Time
The HDTR method is a new approach to depicting the passage of time. High Dynamic Time Range (HDTR) images and are a composite of many photos taken over a long period of time, such as a day or even longer. Each part of the HDTR image is sampled from a different photo, either by column or row.
For example, the left part of the HDTR image might show the scene from 7am and the very right from 8pm, capturing the variation in light across an entire day.
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news + thoughts
Music for the Moon: Flunk's 'Down Here / Moon Above'
The Sanctuary Project is a Lunar vault of science and art. It includes two fully sequenced human genomes, sequenced and assembled by us at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
The first disc includes a song composed by Flunk for the (eventual) trip to the Moon.
But how do you send sound to space? I describe the inspiration, process and art behind the work.
Happy 2021 `\pi` Day—
A forest of digits
Celebrate `\pi` Day (March 14th) and finally see the digits through the forest.
This year is full of botanical whimsy. A Lindenmayer system forest – deterministic but always changing. Feel free to stop and pick the flowers from the ground.
And things can get crazy in the forest.
Check out art from previous years: 2013 `\pi` Day and 2014 `\pi` Day, 2015 `\pi` Day, 2016 `\pi` Day, 2017 `\pi` Day, 2018 `\pi` Day and 2019 `\pi` Day.
Testing for rare conditions
All that glitters is not gold. —W. Shakespeare
The sensitivity and specificity of a test do not necessarily correspond to its error rate. This becomes critically important when testing for a rare condition — a test with 99% sensitivity and specificity has an even chance of being wrong when the condition prevalence is 1%.
We discuss the positive predictive value (PPV) and how practices such as screen can increase it.
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2021) Points of significance: Testing for rare conditions. Nature Methods 18:224–225.
Standardization fallacy
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! —D. Adams
A popular notion about experiments is that it's good to keep variability in subjects low to limit the influence of confounding factors. This is called standardization.
Unfortunately, although standardization increases power, it can induce unrealistically low variability and lead to results that do not generalize to the population of interest. And, in fact, may be irreproducible.
Not paying attention to these details and thinking (or hoping) that standardization is always good is the "standardization fallacy". In this column, we look at how standardization can be balanced with heterogenization to avoid this thorny issue.
Voelkl, B., Würbel, H., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2021) Points of significance: Standardization fallacy. Nature Methods 18:5–6.
Graphical Abstract Design Guidelines
Clear, concise, legible and compelling.
Making a scientific graphical abstract? Refer to my practical design guidelines and redesign examples to improve organization, design and clarity of your graphical abstracts.
"This data might give you a migrane"
An in-depth look at my process of reacting to a bad figure — how I design a poster and tell data stories.
I value
