resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
data visualization + art
Hola Mundo and Hello `\pi`
Art is science in love.
— E.F. Weisslitz
art and algorithms
Some algorithms connect us and some keep us apart—we need them to remind us what it is to be human and what it is to be a computer.
My cover design for Hannah Fry's Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms is based on my 2013 `\pi` Day art. The book is published by Blackie Books.
creating the cover
The cover begins with a 57 × 35 matrix of 1,995 colored circles. Each circle encodes a digit of `\pi`, starting with 3.1415.... Inside each circle is a smaller circle whose color is based on the next digit. The radius of the inner circle is `1/\phi^2` where `1/\phi = 0.618` is the Golden Ratio.
Once the circles are drawn, neighbouring circles that correspond to the same digit are connected with thick lines. The thickness of these lines is `t_0 = 3/(2\phi^2)`, relative to the outer circle radius. Circles that correspond to digits whose difference is `1` or `-1` are connected by a slightly thinner line with thickness `t_1 = t_0/\phi`.
More lines are drawn that connect digits with a larger difference, `|d| > 1`. The thickness for these lines is `t_d = t_0/\phi^{|d|}`. When all differences up to `|d| < 6` are accounted for, we get a pleasant jumble of lines.
To accommodate the title and other text on the cover, the design was generated by avoiding drawing any circles within a certain distance of the text.
This way, the network of digits wraps around the text. In the final design, the front page has 1,418 digits and the back has 878 digits.
cover remixes
just the lines
VIEW ALL
news + thoughts
The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics
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.
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.
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
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.
Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread
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.
Cover of Nature Cancer April 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.
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.
Modeling infectious epidemics
Every day sadder and sadder news of its increase. In the City died this week 7496; and of them, 6102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead this week is near 10,000 ....
—Samuel Pepys, 1665
This month, we begin a series of columns on epidemiological models. We start with the basic SIR model, which models the spread of an infection between three groups in a population: susceptible, infected and recovered.
We discuss conditions under which an outbreak occurs, estimates of spread characteristics and the effects that mitigation can play on disease trajectories. We show the trends that arise when "flattenting the curve" by decreasing `R_0`.
This column has an interactive supplemental component (download code) that allows you to explore how the model curves change with parameters such as infectious period, basic reproduction number and vaccination level.
Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Modeling infectious epidemics. Nature Methods 17:455–456.
The Outbreak Poems
I'm writing poetry daily to put my feelings into words more often during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Tears decline the plural of sad.
Souls look out from dark eye windows.