50+ columns of good explanations ·

With the publication of Uncertainty and the Management of Epidemics, we celebrate our 50th column! Since 2013, our Nature Methods Points of Significance has been offering crisp explanations and practical suggestions about best practices in statistical analysis and reporting. To all our readers and coauthors: thank you and see you in the next column!

It's Snowing in my CPU — a Snowflake catalogue

Go ahead, meet some snowflakes.

litza

torcey

tosey

micka

mivina

leegilna

liaha

Somewhere in the world, it's snowing. But you don't need to go far—it's always snowing on this page. Explore random flurries, snowflake families and individual flakes. There are many unusual snowflakes and snowflake family 12 and family 46 are very interesting.

But don't settle for only pixel snowflakes—make an STL file and 3D print your own flakes!

Ad blockers may interfere with some flake images—the names of flakes can trigger ad filters.

And if after reading about my flakes you want more, get your frozen fix with Kenneth Libbrecht's excellent work and Paul Gallico's Snowflake.

flake families

Flakes are grouped into 50 families using k-means clustering. Families are ordered by the number of flakes in each family—family 1 has the largest number of flakes and family 50 the smallest.

The flakes below are random samples from each family.

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family 47

There are 86 flakes in this family.

loelie f

corane f

ratharny f

maddeel f

micsuo f

rethanda f

linfeldie f

loriga f

lirencee f

ilobend f

roxetta f

lolely f

mitsull f

marxinc f

sarash f

lossia f

sanotha f

mazea f

marynele f

licory f

sizebbe f

laceie f

mossany f

licatha f

raula f

hittin f

nilshea f

sictiline f

lulia f

sicuiza f

lisahbette f

simko f

melory f

marailen f

lunetta f

lieghellele f

sharrone f

slazitta f

heril m

grayl m

laren m

esteg m

rorce m

brayl m

hunel m

lesnis m

noret m

micues m

luydro m

grralz m

narkh m

saseon m

teverte m

helderih m

tysas m

momby m

selbero m

mitah m

lavon m

rallar m

lewonte m

mixbell m

eduig m

lyure m

lelas m

luran m

lugia m

romand m

longal m

harul m

liasles m

muhsan m

longy m

lwiost m

mochalm m

lonvar m

orvalto m

liino m

clariel m

lonsel m

larern m

gaurlnih m

lanren m

carilie m

lonnilo m

himose m