resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
visualization + design
They serve as the form for The Outbreak Poems.
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.
Some of the numerical art reveals interesting and unexpected observations. For example, the sequence 999999 in π at digit 762 called the Feynman Point. Or that if you calculate π to 13,099,586 digits you will find love.
`\pi` day art and `\pi` approximation day art is kept separate.
All of the posters are listed in the posters section. Some also appear in the methods section, where I describe how they were made. Most of the circular art was made with Circos.
Cristian Ilies Vasile had the idea of representing the digits of `\pi` as a path traced by links between successive digits. Each digit is assigned a segment around the circle and a link between segment `i` and `j` corresponds to the appearance of `ij` in `\pi`. For example, the "14" in "3.14..." is drawn as a link between segment 1 and segment 4.
The position of the link on a digit's segment is associated with the position of the digit `\pi`. For example, the "14" link associated with the 2nd digit (1) and the 3rd digit (4) is drawn from position 2 on the 1 segment to position 3 on the 4 segment.
As more digits are added to the path, the image becomes a weaving mandala.
circos art of `\pi`, `\phi` and `e`—transition paths and bubbles
I added to Cristian's representation by showing the number of transitions between digits in a series of concentric circles placed outside the links. This summary representation counts the number of transition links within a region and addresses the question of what kind of digits appear immediately before or after a given digit in `\pi`. The approach is diagrammed below.
The original images were generated using the 10-color Brewer paired qualitative palette, which was later modified as shown below.
The bubbles that count the number of links quickly draw attention to regions where specific digit pairs are frequent. In the image for `\pi` below, which shows transitions for the first 1,000 digits, the large bubble on the 9 segment is due to the "999999" sequence at decimal place 762. This is the Feynman point, which I describe below.
buy artwork
The image below shows how this representation of `\pi` compares to that of `\phi` and `e`.
buy artwork
The transition probabilities for each 10 digit bin for the first 2,000 digits of `\pi`, `\phi` and `e` are shown in the image below.
buy artwork
Feynman point
This sequence of 6 9's occurs significantly earlier than expected by chance. Because the distribution and sequence of digits of `\pi` is thought to be normal, we can calculate how frequently we should expect a series of 6 identical digits.
For a given digit, the chance that the next 5 digits are the same is 0.00001 (0.1 that the next digit is the same × 0.1 that the second-nex digit is the same × ...). Therefore the chance that a given position the next 5 digits are not the same is 1 - 1/0.00001 = 0.99999. From this, the chance that `k` consecutive digits don't initiate a 6-digit sequence is therefore 0.99999`k`.
If I ask what is `k` for which this value is 0.5, I need to solve 0.99999`k`, which gives `k` = 69,314. Thus, chances are even (50%) that in a 69,000 digit random sequence we'll see a run of 6 idendical digits. This calculation is an approximation.
It's fun to look for words in `\pi`. For example, love appears at 13,099,586th digit.
A tangent into randomness
The digits of `\pi` are, as far as we know, randomly distributed. Art based on its digits therefore as a quality that is influenced by this random distribution. To provide a reference of what such a random pattern looks like, below are 16 random numbers represented in the same way. They're all different, yet strangely the same.
Circos art of `\pi`—heaps of bubbles
Below are more images by Cristian Ilies Vasile, where dots are used to represent the adjacency between digits. As in the image above, each digit 0-9 is represented by a colored segment. For each digit sequence `ij`, a dot is placed on the `i`th segment at the position of `i` colored by `j`.
For example, for `\pi` the dot coordinates for the first 7 digits are (segment:position:label) 3:0:1 → 1:1:4 → 4:2:1 → 1:3:5 → 5:4:9 ...
segment position colored_by 3 0 1 1 1 4 4 2 1 1 3 5 5 4 9 9 5 2 2 6 6
Because there is a large number of digits, the dots stack up near their position to avoid overlapping. The layout of the dots is automated by Circos' text track layout.
buy artwork
spiral art of `\pi`
By mapping the digits onto a red-yellow-blue Brewer palette (0 
9) and placing them as circles on an Archimedean spiral a dense and pleasant layout can be obtained.
Why the Archimedean spiral? This spiral is defined as `r = a + b \theta` and has the interesting property that a ray from the origin will intersect the spiral every `2 pi b`. Thus, each spiral can accomodate inscribed circles of radius `\pi b`.
Why the Brewer palette? These color schemes have some very useful perceptual properties and are commonly used to encode quantitative and categorical data.
I have use the Archimedean spiral to make art for `\pi` approximation day
buy artwork
VIEW ALL
news + thoughts
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.
He said, he said — a word analysis of the 2020 Presidential Debates
Building on the method I used to analyze the 2008, 2012 and 2016 U.S. Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, I explore word usagein the 2020 Debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Points of Significance celebrates 50th column
We are celebrating the publication of our 50th column!
To all our coauthors — thank you and see you in the next column!
Uncertainty and the management of epidemics
When modelling epidemics, some uncertainties matter more than others.
Public health policy is always hampered by uncertainty. During a novel outbreak, nearly everything will be uncertain: the mode of transmission, the duration and population variability of latency, infection and protective immunity and, critically, whether the outbreak will fade out or turn into a major epidemic.
The uncertainty may be structural (which model?), parametric (what is `R_0`?), and/or operational (how well do masks work?).
This month, we continue our exploration of epidemiological models and look at how uncertainty affects forecasts of disease dynamics and optimization of intervention strategies.
We show how the impact of the uncertainty on any choice in strategy can be expressed using the Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI), which is the potential improvement in outcomes that could be obtained if the uncertainty is resolved before making a decision on the intervention strategy. In other words, by how much could we potentially increase effectiveness of our choice (e.g. lowering total disease burden) if we knew which model best reflects reality?
This column has an interactive supplemental component (download code) that allows you to explore the impact of uncertainty in `R_0` and immunity duration on timing and size of epidemic waves and the total burden of the outbreak and calculate EVPI for various outbreak models and scenarios.
Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Uncertainty and the management of epidemics. Nature Methods 17.
Background reading
Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Modeling infectious epidemics. Nature Methods 17:455–456.
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.
Cover of Nature Genetics August 2020
Our design on the cover of Nature Genetics's August 2020 issue is “Dichotomy of Chromatin in Color” . Thanks to Dr. Andy Mungall for suggesting this terrific title.
The cover design accompanies our report in the issue Gagliardi, A., Porter, V.L., Zong, Z. et al. (2020) Analysis of Ugandan cervical carcinomas identifies human papillomavirus clade–specific epigenome and transcriptome landscapes. Nature Genetics 52:800–810.