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.
Welcome to this year's celebration of `\pi` and mathematics. Among the chaos of CORVID-19, this year `\pi` Day celebrations are short poetic emissions I call “piku”. They are brief pauses for the time.
Start by reading how piku are constructed and then browse submitted piku. Consider participating by submitting your own piku. All you need is a pen and a few (small) words. Very therapeutic.
But if the words here don't help, immerse yourself in my coronavirus art. It's quite catching.
If you enjoy poetry and words, see how I convert spam into poems in the style of ee cummings and if you like to see words arrange on page, look through my typographic art.
You may know the haiku (俳句) as a short three line poem whose lines traditionally have 5, 7 and 5 syllables (specifically, morae or phonetic sounds).
On a recent trip to Japan I was looking to my environment for inspiration for this year's `\pi` Day. I also really wanted a scheme that would allow people to contribute to the art so that everyone could be both a participant and an audience.
After scribbling for a little bit (or a long while), I came up with the idea of a piku (`\pi`ku, パイク). Analogously to a haiku, the piku is poem whose structure is constrained. But in this case, the constraints are the digits of `\pi` itself.
The simplest piku is a 3 phrase poem with 3, 1 and 4 syllables, respectively. Perhaps the most trivial piku is just the list of digits.
Specifically, Haiku count the number of phonetic sounds which isn't always the same as syllables. For example, the word "any" has two such sounds: a-ny.
If you're interested in how the counting of sounds is done in Japanese, read about marking time and beats in Haiku.
But a more fun one would be
Longer words can be used, of course. But watch out for the lines that require a single syllable.
You can use hyphenation to work around the syllable count.
Piku is singulare tantum—its plural form is the same as its singular.
This is because its inspiration is the haiku and in Japanese nouns do not have different singular and plural forms,
In general, a piku may have more than 3 lines. This reflects the fact that the digits of `\pi` do not terminate.
The endless piku is just waiting to be written. Well... started, at least.
The digit zero is a line with no syllables and corresponds to a compulsory verse break. But because the first zero in `\pi` is at digit 33, you wouldn't see a verse break for a while.
Therefore, you're free to introduce a verse break anywhere in the piku (this does not use up a digit). For example,
Any number, `n`, has its own nku. The rules for its construction are the same: each digit generates a line with corresponding number of syllables.
For example, the haiku is an nku for `n = 575`.
The year of your birth has an nku—you might want to try composing one to reflect on your origins.
In fact, any date (e.g. DDMMYYYY) can be made into an nku. This year's `\pi` date in this format is 14032020 and here's one possible nku.
The trailing zero in the number creates a verse break at the end of a poem. This can be ignored or used to generate a blank line if the poem is set with other text on the page.
Our cover on the 11 January 2023 Cell Genomics issue depicts the process of determining the parent-of-origin using differential methylation of alleles at imprinted regions (iDMRs) is imagined as a circuit.
Designed in collaboration with with Carlos Urzua.
Akbari, V. et al. Parent-of-origin detection and chromosome-scale haplotyping using long-read DNA methylation sequencing and Strand-seq (2023) Cell Genomics 3(1).
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
My cover design on the 6 January 2023 Science Advances issue depicts DNA sequencing read translation in high-dimensional space. The image showss 672 bases of sequencing barcodes generated by three different single-cell RNA sequencing platforms were encoded as oriented triangles on the faces of three 7-dimensional cubes.
More details about the design.
Kijima, Y. et al. A universal sequencing read interpreter (2023) Science Advances 9
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
If you sit on the sofa for your entire life, you’re running a higher risk of getting heart disease and cancer. —Alex Honnold, American rock climber
In a follow-up to our Survival analysis — time-to-event data and censoring article, we look at how regression can be used to account for additional risk factors in survival analysis.
We explore accelerated failure time regression (AFTR) and the Cox Proportional Hazards model (Cox PH).
Dey, T., Lipsitz, S.R., Cooper, Z., Trinh, Q., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2022) Points of significance: Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring. Nature Methods 19.
My 5-dimensional animation sets the visual stage for Max Cooper's Ascent from the album Unspoken Words. I have previously collaborated with Max on telling a story about infinity for his Yearning for the Infinite album.
I provide a walkthrough the video, describe the animation system I created to generate the frames, and show you all the keyframes
The video recently premiered on YouTube.
Renders of the full scene are available as NFTs.
I am more than my genome and my genome is more than me.
The MIT Museum reopened at its new location on 2nd October 2022. The new Gene Cultures exhibit featured my visualization of the human genome, which walks through the size and organization of the genome and some of the important structures.
My cover design on the 1 September 2022 Annals of Oncology issue shows 570 individual cases of difficult-to-treat cancers. Each case shows the number and type of actionable genomic alterations that were detected and the length of therapies that resulted from the analysis.
Pleasance E et al. Whole-genome and transcriptome analysis enhances precision cancer treatment options (2022) Annals of Oncology 33:939–949.
Browse my gallery of cover designs.