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# art is science is art

Scientific graphical abstracts — design guidelines

# data visualization + art

The BC Cancer Agency’s Personalized Oncogenomics Program (POG) is a clinical research initiative applying genomic sequencing to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with incurable cancers.

# Art of the Personalized Oncogenomics Program

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
— Richard Feynman

The design on the posters is being used for the Vancouver Ride to Conquer Cancer cycling jersey. (buy a jersey, tour info)
The POG art shows 545 cases studied over the course of 5 years and is freely available as posters for printing and images for your desktop and presentation slides in both bitmap and PDF formats.
5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases ordered chronologically by case number. (zoom)
5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases grouped by diagnosis (tissue type) and then by similarity within group. (zoom)

## cancer is the difference of differences

As individuals, we all have slightly different genomes. If you compare the genomes of two people, you will find about 3 million base pair differences, which is about 0.1% of the genome.

This variation exists not only within the population but potentially also, to a lesser extent, among our cells, which number around 40 trillion. That's roughly 10,000 cells for each base in your 3 billion base genome. And each has a role to play.

POG cases, by tissue type
n %
Gastrointestinal 141 25

Breast 138 25

Thoracic 57 10

Gynecologic 45 8.3

Soft tissue 44 8.1

Skin 11 2.0

Urologic 8 1.5

Hematologic 7 1.3

Endocrine 5 0.9

Central nervous system 5 0.9

Other 78 14

ALL 545

One consequence of this complexity and variation is that changes in the genome (through mutation or other processes) can have very different effects, depending on both the change and the genome. Cancer is a phenomena in which cells' ability to organize themselves as they divide is altered due to changes in the genome. It is an incredibly complex biological phenomenon—considering all the genomes in the population and all the possible changes that may arise, there is truly an inexhaustible number of ways in which the genome can break.

## classifying cancer

Cancers are classified according to their site of origin, such as lung, breast, liver, or colon. This is a coarse grouping—within each group there are many subtypes with differences in response to treatment and overall behaviour.

## diversities among clinical cases

The design of the POG art highlights the diversity and similarity among cases. The diversity is what makes the study of cancer difficult and the similarities are what makes inference possible.

Each case is represented by three concentric rings. The width of each ring represents the extent to which the case is similar (as measured by correlation) to cancers of the type encoded by the color of the ring (see Methods).

## remixes

In additional to the posters, I've created remixes for your desktop at 4k resolution.

5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases ordered chronologically by case number. (zoom)
5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases ordered chronologically by case number. (zoom)
5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases ordered chronologically by case number. (zoom)
5 Years of Personalized Oncogenomics Project at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The poster shows 545 cancer cases. Cases ordered chronologically by case number. (zoom)

## Ride to Conquer Cancer — Data-powered, Human-driven

This year, the cyclists in the Ride to Conquer Cancer will not only have the chance to raise money for research (as they've always done) but also do so while wearing data (as they've never done before).

# 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.