I'm not real and I deny I won't heal unless I cry.let it gomore quotes

# making poetry out of spam is fun

UCD Computational and Molecular Biology Symposium, Dublin, Ireland. 1-2 Dec 2016.

# visualization + design

Like paths? Got your lines twisted in a bunch?
Take a look at my 2014 Pi Day art that folds Pi.

# Hilbert Curve Art, Hilbertonians and Monkeys

I collaborated with Scientific American to create a data graphic for the September 2014 issue. The graphic compared the genomes of the Denisovan, bonobo, chimp and gorilla, showing how our own genomes are almost identical to the Denisovan and closer to that of the bonobo and chimp than the gorilla.

Here you'll find Hilbert curve art, a introduction to Hilbertonians, the creatures that live on the curve, an explanation of the Scientific American graphic and downloadable SVG/EPS Hilbert curve files.

## Hilbert curve art posters

There are wheels within wheels in this village and fires within fires!
— Arthur Miller (The Crucible)

Recursive art. Same line. A variety of styles. Font is Gotham Light.

You can download the basic curve shapes for orders 1 to 10 and experiment yourself. Both square and circular forms are available.

All the art here is available for purchase at Fine Art America.

Here are some samples of the posters. They are classified into categories.

VIEW ALL

# Intuitive Design

Thu 03-11-2016

Appeal to intuition when designing with value judgments in mind.

Figure clarity and concision are improved when the selection of shapes and colors is grounded in the Gestalt principles, which describe how we visually perceive and organize information.

One of the Gestalt principles tells us that the magenta and green shapes will be perceived as as two groups, overriding the fact that the shapes within the group might be different. What the principle does not tell us is how the reader is likely to value each group. (read)

The Gestalt principles are value free. For example, they tell us how we group objects but do not speak to any meaning that we might intuitively infer from visual characteristics.

Nature Methods Points of View column: Intuitive Design. (read)

This month, we discuss how appealing to such intuitions—related to shapes, colors and spatial orientation— can help us add information to a figure as well as anticipate and encourage useful interpretations.

Krzywinski, M. (2016) Points of View: Intuitive Design. Nature Methods 13:895.

# Regularization

Fri 04-11-2016

Constraining the magnitude of parameters of a model can control its complexity.

This month we continue our discussion about model selection and evaluation and address how to choose a model that avoids both overfitting and underfitting.

Ideally, we want to avoid having either an underfitted model, which is usually a poor fit to the training data, or an overfitted model, which is a good fit to the training data but not to new data.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Regularization (read)

Regularization is a process that penalizes the magnitude of model parameters. This is done by not only minimizing the SSE, $\mathrm{SSE} = \sum_i (y_i - \hat{y}_i)^2$, as is done normally in a fit, but adding to this minimized quantity the sum of the mode's squared parameters, $\mathrm{SSE} + \lambda \sum_i \hat{\beta}^2_i$.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Regularization. Nature Methods 13:803-804.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Model Selection and Overfitting. Nature Methods 13:703-704.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Classifier evaluation. Nature Methods 13:603-604.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541-542.

# Model Selection and Overfitting

Fri 04-11-2016

With four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. —John von Neumann.

By increasing the complexity of a model, it is easy to make it fit to data perfectly. Does this mean that the model is perfectly suitable? No.

When a model has a relatively large number of parameters, it is likely to be influenced by the noise in the data, which varies across observations, as much as any underlying trend, which remains the same. Such a model is overfitted—it matches training data well but does not generalize to new observations.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Model Selection and Overfitting (read)

We discuss the use of training, validation and testing data sets and how they can be used, with methods such as cross-validation, to avoid overfitting.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Model Selection and Overfitting. Nature Methods 13:703-704.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Classifier evaluation. Nature Methods 13:603-604.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541-542.

# Classifier Evaluation

Tue 13-09-2016

It is important to understand both what a classification metric expresses and what it hides.

We examine various metrics use to assess the performance of a classifier. We show that a single metric is insufficient to capture performance—for any metric, a variety of scenarios yield the same value.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Classifier Evaluation (read)

We also discuss ROC and AUC curves and how their interpretation changes based on class balance.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Classifier evaluation. Nature Methods 13:603-604.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541-542.

# Happy 2016 $\pi$ Approximation, roughly speaking

Sun 24-07-2016

Today is the day and it's hardly an approximation. In fact, $22/7$ is 20% more accurate of a representation of $\pi$ than $3.14$!

Time to celebrate, graphically. This year I do so with perfect packing of circles that embody the approximation.

By warping the circle by 8% along one axis, we can create a shape whose ratio of circumference to diameter, taken as twice the average radius, is 22/7.

If you prefer something more accurate, check out art from previous $\pi$ days: 2013 $\pi$ Day and 2014 $\pi$ Day, 2015 $\pi$ Day, and 2016 $\pi$ Day.

# Logistic Regression

Tue 13-09-2016

Regression can be used on categorical responses to estimate probabilities and to classify.

The next column in our series on regression deals with how to classify categorical data.

We show how linear regression can be used for classification and demonstrate that it can be unreliable in the presence of outliers. Using a logistic regression, which fits a linear model to the log odds ratio, improves robustness.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Logistic regression? (read)

Logistic regression is solved numerically and in most cases, the maximum-likelihood estimates are unique and optimal. However, when the classes are perfectly separable, the numerical approach fails because there is an infinite number of solutions.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of Significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541-542.