resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
visualization + design
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.
news + thoughts
Tabular Data
Tabulating the number of objects in categories of interest dates back to the earliest records of commerce and population censuses.After 30 columns, this is our first one without a single figure. Sometimes a table is all you need.
In this column, we discuss nominal categorical data, in which data points are assigned to categories in which there is no implied order. We introduce one-way and two-way tables and the `\chi^2` and Fisher's exact tests.
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of Significance: Tabular data. Nature Methods 14:329–330.
Happy 2017 `\pi` Day—Star Charts, Creatures Once Living and a Poem
on a brim of echo,
capsized chamber
drawn into our constellation, and cooling.
—Paolo Marcazzan
Celebrate `\pi` Day (March 14th) with star chart of the digits. The charts draw 40,000 stars generated from the first 12 million digits.
The 80 constellations are extinct animals and plants. Here you'll find old friends and new stories. Read about how Desmodus is always trying to escape or how Megalodon terrorizes the poor Tecopa! Most constellations have a story.
This year I collaborate with Paolo Marcazzan, a Canadian poet, who contributes a poem, Of Black Body, about space and things we might find and lose there.
Check out art from previous years: 2013 `\pi` Day and 2014 `\pi` Day, 2015 `\pi` Day and and 2016 `\pi` Day.
Data in New Dimensions: convergence of art, genomics and bioinformatics
Art is science in love.
— E.F. Weisslitz
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of our stereoscopic images which were at display at the AGBT 2017 Conference in February. The art is a creative collaboration with Becton Dickinson and The Linus Group.
Its creation began with the concept of differences and my writeup of the creative and design process focuses on storytelling and how concept of differences is incorporated into the art.
Oh, and this might be a good time to pick up some red-blue 3D glasses.
Interpreting P values
A P value measures a sample’s compatibility with a hypothesis, not the truth of the hypothesis.This month we continue our discussion about `P` values and focus on the fact that `P` value is a probability statement about the observed sample in the context of a hypothesis, not about the hypothesis being tested.
Given that we are always interested in making inferences about hypotheses, we discuss how `P` values can be used to do this by way of the Benjamin-Berger bound, `\bar{B}` on the Bayes factor, `B`.
Heuristics such as these are valuable in helping to interpret `P` values, though we stress that `P` values vary from sample to sample and hence many sources of evidence need to be examined before drawing scientific conclusions.
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of Significance: Interpreting P values. Nature Methods 14:213–214.
Background reading
Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2017) Points of significance: P values and the search for significance. Nature Methods 14:3–4.
Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2013) Points of significance: Significance, P values and t–tests. Nature Methods 10:1041–1042.
Snellen Charts—Typography to Really Look at
Another collection of typographical posters. These ones really ask you to look.
The charts show a variety of interesting symbols and operators found in science and math. The design is in the style of a Snellen chart and typset with the Rockwell font.
Essentials of Data Visualization—8-part video series
In collaboration with the Phil Poronnik and Kim Bell-Anderson at the University of Sydney, I'm delighted to share with you our 8-part video series project about thinking about drawing data and communicating science.
We've created 8 videos, each focusing on a different essential idea in data visualization: encoding, shapes, color, uncertainty, design, drawing missing or unobserved data, labels and process.
The videos were designed as teaching materials. Each video comes with a slide deck and exercises.