resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
visualization + design
They serve as the form for The Outbreak Poems.
`\pi` Day 2015 Art Posters
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.
Not a circle in sight in the 2015 `\pi` day art. Try to figure out how up to 612,330 digits are encoded before reading about the method. `\pi`'s transcendental friends `\phi` and `e` are there too—golden and natural. Get it?
This year's `\pi` day is particularly special. The digits of time specify a precise time if the date is encoded in North American day-month-year convention: 3-14-15 9:26:53.
The art has been featured in Ana Swanson's Wonkblog article at the Washington Post—10 Stunning Images Show The Beauty Hidden in `\pi`.
This year's art has a modern Bauhaus style. Sharp edges, lines and solid colors. Potato farms from space. CPUs from up close. If the pieces look like the art of Piet Mondrian, you'd be right.
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The digits of `pi` are encoded in something that looks like a treemap. I explain how this is done in the methods section, but before reading it, try to see if you can figure out how it's done.
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I briefly experimented with the 4-color theorem in trying to apply color to the treemap, but it turned out to lack interesting stucture. Well, at least some graphs were made.
I experimented with different treemap resolutions. For treemaps that use an outline around each rectangle, I decided to stop at 8 levels, at which 111,469 digits of `pi` can be encoded.
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I also made a level 9 treemap without the outlines, which encoded 612,330 digits. When rendered at 20,833 × 20,833 pixels (I needed the image in bitmap form to provide the posters for sale), some regions are essentially a pixel in size, as seen in the 1-1 crop below.
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news + thoughts
The Outbreak Poems
I'm writing poetry daily to put my feelings into words more often during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Panic can wait for tomorrow.
Regrets live on curves not tangents.
Small chances are never zero.
Month's last day waits for another year.
Deadly Genomes: Genome Structure and Size of Harmful Bacteria and Viruses
A poster full of epidemiological worry and statistics. Now updated with the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 case statistics as of 3 March 2020.
Bacterial and viral genomes of various diseases are drawn as paths with color encoding local GC content and curvature encoding local repeat content. Position of the genome encodes prevalence and mortality rate.
The deadly genomes collection has been updated with a posters of the genomes of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Using Circos in Galaxy Australia Workshop
A workshop in using the Circos Galaxy wrapper by Hiltemann and Rasche. Event organized by Australian Biocommons.
Galaxy wrapper training materials, Saskia Hiltemann, Helena Rasche, 2020 Visualisation with Circos (Galaxy Training Materials).
Essence of Data Visualization in Bioinformatics Webinar
My webinar on fundamental concepts in data visualization and visual communication of scientific data and concepts. Event organized by Australian Biocommons.
Markov models — training and evaluation of hidden Markov models
With one eye you are looking at the outside world, while with the other you are looking within yourself.
—Amedeo Modigliani
Following up with our Markov Chain column and Hidden Markov model column, this month we look at how Markov models are trained using the example of biased coin.
We introduce the concepts of forward and backward probabilities and explicitly show how they are calculated in the training process using the Baum-Welch algorithm. We also discuss the value of ensemble models and the use of pseudocounts for cases where rare observations are expected but not necessarily seen.
Grewal, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Markov models — training and evaluation of hidden Markov models. Nature Methods 17:121–122.
Background reading
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2019) Points of significance: Hidden Markov models. Nature Methods 16:795–796.
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2019) Points of significance: Markov Chains. Nature Methods 16:663–664.
Genome Sciences Center 20th Anniversary Clothing, Music, Drinks and Art
Science. Timeliness. Respect.
Read about the design of the clothing, music, drinks and art for the Genome Sciences Center 20th Anniversary Celebration, held on 15 November 2019.
As part of the celebration and with the help of our engineering team, we framed 48 flow cells from the lab.
Each flow cell was accompanied by an interpretive plaque explaining the technology behind the flow cell and the sample information and sequence content.
