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

# numbers: beautiful

Scientific graphical abstracts — design guidelines

# visualization + design

A $\pi$ day music video!: Transcendental Tree Map premieres on 2020 Pi Day from Max Cooper's Yearning for the Infinite. Animation by Nick Cobby and myself. Watch live from Barbican Centre.
Music video of the “Transcendental Tree Map” Max Cooper's Yearning for the Infinite album. This video premiered on 2020 Pi Day. Music by Max Cooper. Animation by Nick Cobby and myself.
The 2020 Pi Day art celebrates digits of $\pi$ with piku (パイク) —poetry inspired by haiku.
They serve as the form for The Outbreak Poems.
Tau Day tree map animation of 8,909 digits of $\tau = 2 \pi$ created with 40,015 lines. The video is 6:28 minutes long.

# $\pi$ Day 2014 Art Posters

2019 $\pi$ has hundreds of digits, hundreds of languages and a special kids' edition.
2018 $\pi$ day
2017 $\pi$ day
2016 $\pi$ approximation day
2016 $\pi$ day
2015 $\pi$ day
2014 $\pi$ approx day
2014 $\pi$ day
2013 $\pi$ day
Circular $\pi$ art

On March 14th celebrate $\pi$ Day. Hug $\pi$—find a way to do it.

For those who favour $\tau=2\pi$ will have to postpone celebrations until July 26th. That's what you get for thinking that $\pi$ is wrong. I sympathize with this position and have $\tau$ day art too!

If you're not into details, you may opt to party on July 22nd, which is $\pi$ approximation day ($\pi$ ≈ 22/7). It's 20% more accurate that the official $\pi$ day!

Finally, if you believe that $\pi = 3$, you should read why $\pi$ is not equal to 3.

All art posters are available for purchase.
I take custom requests.

For the 2014 $\pi$ day, two styles of posters are available: folded paths and frequency circles.

The folded paths show $\pi$ on a path that maximizes adjacent prime digits and were created using a protein-folding algorithm.

The frequency circles colourfully depict the ratio of digits in groupings of 3 or 6. Oh, look, there's the Feynman Point!

### get simulation code

Download the HP lattice simulation binary. You'll need one of the three 2D methods — I used $rem2dm$, which does local and pull moves. If you'd like to learn more about the algorithm, read the publication.

A replica exchange Monte Carlo algorithm for protein folding in the HP model. Chris Thachuk, Alena Shmygelska and Holger H Hoos, BMC Bioinformatics 2007, 8:342 (17 Sep 2007).

### run simulation

When you run the 64-digit simulation, you're likely to find a path with $E=-23$, which is the lowest energy I've been able to sample. On my Intel Xeon E5540 (2.53 GHz) it takes anywhere from 1-30 seconds to find a $E=-23$ path (there are many possible paths at this energy), depending on the random seed. Here's the output of a typical run of the 64-digit folding simulation

$> rem2dm -seq=hppphphphhhpphphhhppphpphhphhhphphppppphppphpphhhpphphpphpppphph -maxT=220 -numLocalSteps=500 -eng=100 -maxRunTime=60 -traceFile=pi.64 -minT=160 -expID=pi.64 -numReps=10 REMC-HP2D-M Begin Simulation 0.01: Current Best Solution: -8 0.01: Current Best Solution: -10 0.01: Current Best Solution: -13 0.02: Current Best Solution: -15 0.03: Current Best Solution: -16 0.03: Current Best Solution: -17 0.04: Current Best Solution: -18 0.04: Current Best Solution: -19 0.16: Current Best Solution: -20 0.27: Current Best Solution: -21 0.69: Current Best Solution: -22 36.23: Current Best Solution: -23 Real time: 120 ggslrrsrllssrrlrrllsrrlrrlslslrrsrlssrrsllrslrrlrsllsrsrrlsrssrs p--h--p | | h--h h--p--p--p | | p--p h H h--p--p | | | | | p--h h--h--p p p--p | | | p--p--h h--p p--p p | | | | | h--h h h--p--h h--p | | | p--h h h--p--H h--p | | | | p--p p p--h--h | | p p--h--p | | p--p--h h | | p--p End Simulation$

If you want to apply this to different number (e.g. φ or e ), you'll need to replace the digits with either $p$ or $h$. Remember, the simulation will try to group the $h$'s together. You can download 1,000,000 of π , φ and e .

The best path I could find for 768 digits is one with $E=-223$. In 1000s of simulations this solution came up only once. I also saw one path at $E=-222$. After that, there were many solutions at each of the less optimal energy levels.

If you manage to find a better one, let me know right away!

## common problems

### segmental fault

If you obtain a segmentation fault,

$> ./rem2dlm REMC-HP2D-LM Begin Simulation Real time: 0 Segmentation fault$

don't panic just yet. The folding binaries don't do a lot of error checking, so you have to get the input parameters correct.

For example, if you do not include the $-eng$ parameter, the code will segfault.

Try one of the batch files above (64 digit batch file, 768 digit batch file) or the following simple job

$> bin/rem2dm -seq=hhpppphhhhpppphh -maxRunTime=5 -eng 10 REMC-HP2D-M Begin Simulation 3.13877e-17: Current Best Solution: -2 5.49284e-17: Current Best Solution: -3 1.0201e-16: Current Best Solution: -4 1.33398e-16: Current Best Solution: -5 Real time: 5 ggrllslsssrllsls p--p--p | | h h--p | | H h | H h | | p--h h | | p--p--p$

If this segfaults, then you'll need to recompile the code (see below).

### compile code (optional—only if binaries don't work)

Precompiled binaries are available for download directly: rem2dm, rem2dlm, rem2dpm, rem3dm, rem3dlm, rem3dpm.

If these don't work on your system, you need to recompile them. Download the the protein folding code and see INSTALL.txt for compilation instructions.

# Graphical Abstract Design Guidelines

Fri 13-11-2020

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.

Graphical Abstract Design Guidelines — Clear, concise, legible and compelling.

# "This data might give you a migrane"

Tue 06-10-2020

An in-depth look at my process of reacting to a bad figure — how I design a poster and tell data stories.

A poster of high BMI and obesity prevalence for 185 countries.

# He said, he said — a word analysis of the 2020 Presidential Debates

Thu 01-10-2020

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.

Analysis of word usage by parts of speech for Trump and Biden reveals insight into each candidate.

# Points of Significance celebrates 50th column

Mon 24-08-2020

We are celebrating the publication of our 50th column!

To all our coauthors — thank you and see you in the next column!

Nature Methods Points of Significance: Celebrating 50 columns of clear explanations of statistics. (read)

# Uncertainty and the management of epidemics

Mon 24-08-2020

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.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Uncertainty and the management of epidemics. (read)

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.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Uncertainty and the management of epidemics. (Interactive supplemental materials)

Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Uncertainty and the management of epidemics. Nature Methods 17.

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

Mon 03-08-2020

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.

Dichotomy of Chromatin in Color. Nature Genetics, August 2020 issue. (read more)

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.