Trance opera—Spente le Stellebe dramaticmore quotes

# art: needed

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

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
— Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind (Ch 25)

Desktops are available for various display aspect ratios.

For the 4k 16:9 desktop, I've included a few remixes of the original art.

An explanation of how these images were generated, along with a printable legend, is available in the Methods section.

## 1280 × 960 (4:3)

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)

## 1920 × 1080 (16:9)

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)

## 1920 × 1200 (16:10)

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)

## 3840 × 2160 (4k 16:9)

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)

### remixes

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)
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)

# Music for the Moon: Flunk's 'Down Here / Moon Above'

Sat 29-05-2021

The Sanctuary Project is a Lunar vault of science and art. It includes two fully sequenced human genomes, sequenced and assembled by us at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.

The first disc includes a song composed by Flunk for the (eventual) trip to the Moon.

But how do you send sound to space? I describe the inspiration, process and art behind the work.

The song 'Down Here / Moon Above' from Flunk's new album History of Everything Ever is our song for space. It appears on the Sanctuary genome discs, which aim to send two fully sequenced human genomes to the Moon. (more)

# Happy 2021 $\pi$ Day—A forest of digits

Sun 14-03-2021

Celebrate $\pi$ Day (March 14th) and finally see the digits through the forest.

The 26th tree in the digit forest of $\pi$. Why is there a flower on the ground?. (details)

This year is full of botanical whimsy. A Lindenmayer system forest – deterministic but always changing. Feel free to stop and pick the flowers from the ground.

The first 46 digits of $\pi$ in 8 trees. There are so many more. (details)

And things can get crazy in the forest.

A forest of the digits of '\pi$, by ecosystem. (details) Check out art from previous years: 2013$\pi$Day and 2014$\pi$Day, 2015$\pi$Day, 2016$\pi$Day, 2017$\pi$Day, 2018$\pi$Day and 2019$\pi` Day.

# Testing for rare conditions

Sun 30-05-2021

All that glitters is not gold. —W. Shakespeare

The sensitivity and specificity of a test do not necessarily correspond to its error rate. This becomes critically important when testing for a rare condition — a test with 99% sensitivity and specificity has an even chance of being wrong when the condition prevalence is 1%.

We discuss the positive predictive value (PPV) and how practices such as screen can increase it.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Testing for rare conditions. (read)

Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2021) Points of significance: Testing for rare conditions. Nature Methods 18:224–225.

# Standardization fallacy

Tue 09-02-2021

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! —D. Adams

A popular notion about experiments is that it's good to keep variability in subjects low to limit the influence of confounding factors. This is called standardization.

Unfortunately, although standardization increases power, it can induce unrealistically low variability and lead to results that do not generalize to the population of interest. And, in fact, may be irreproducible.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Standardization fallacy. (read)

Not paying attention to these details and thinking (or hoping) that standardization is always good is the "standardization fallacy". In this column, we look at how standardization can be balanced with heterogenization to avoid this thorny issue.

Voelkl, B., Würbel, H., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2021) Points of significance: Standardization fallacy. Nature Methods 18:5–6.

# 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.