Hey folks, This week I want to share with you a figure that resembles many a type of figure that I see in a lot of genomics papers. I’d consider it a data visualization meme - kind of like how you’re “required” to have a stacked bar plot if you’re doing microbiome research or a dynamite plot if you’re publishing in Nature :) This figure was included in the paper, “Impact of intensive control on malaria population genomics under elimination settings in Southeast Asia” that was published...
9 days ago • 4 min read
Hey folks! I hope you enjoyed last week’s series on the radial volcano plot (newsletter, critique video, livestream). I think it did a good job of illustrating the various reasons I think it’s valuable to recreate figures, even if we don’t like how they display the data. Something I didn’t really emphasize in last week’s newsletter was that by recreating a figure, we can make sure that the data are legit. I’m surprised by the number of signals I’ve been finding where authors using tools like...
16 days ago • 3 min read
Hey folks! Before launching into this week’s visualization, I’m looking for a bit of feedback. Since November, I’ve settled into a new routine with this newsletter and the YouTube channel. Each week this newsletter introduces a visualization at a 30,000 ft view or discusses a specific topic in some depth (example). The following Monday I post a video critiquing the visualization (example). Then on Wednesday (or Tuesday like this past week), I livestream a video where I recreate the...
23 days ago • 5 min read
Hey folks! I just got back from a seminar. I’m still trying to stretch out my eyes from straining to see the small text on each slide! If you don’t know why I’m brining this up, then you must have missed the videos I posted earlier this week. I was discussing the factors we should consider when converting figures designed for papers to figures designed to a slide deck. You can see me critique a figure from my own lab here and the livestream where I refactor the figure can be found here. I’d...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, I was a student-invited speaker at the Syracuse University Biology department this week. It was great to meet with them and hear how they are benefiting from these newsletters and my videos. As much as I love posting newsletters and videos, seeing people light up at ideas, laugh at my jokes, and tell me how they are using what I teach them is like jet fuel. I actually gave two talks. One talk covered what I’ve learned about data visualization by critiquing, recreating, and remaking...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, If you missed Wednesday’s livestream, I encourage you to go back and check it out. I recreated a panel from a paper published in Nature that is pretty typical. It was made up entirely of photographs. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only PI that doesn’t merge panels into figures using Illustrator or Powerpoint. I prefer to use R with some help from {cowplot} or {patchwork} to do this for me. That way I can write a single script to generate the entire set of panels. The result is a...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, This week I’ve been teaching one of my 3 day R workshops as part of my official teaching duties at the U of Michigan. I really enjoy teaching these classes! I offer recorded versions of these workshops that use microbiome data or other types of data to help motivate my teaching of R’s tidyverse packages. If you would like to purchase your own version of these workshop click on those links! Also, if you would like me to teach a live workshop to your group, reply to this email and...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, If you missed it, on Wednesday I did a livestream where I made a stacked barplot and pronounced it good. No, I wasn’t drinking anything! But it’s a reminder to think about the question before finding the best data visualization strategy. I think this highlights the value of the constructive approach I’ve been trying to take to critiquing data visualizations. The first steps are to establish the question and figure out the question. If you aren’t a “regular”, I think you’re really...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Hey folks, As I mentioned last week, I’m exploring the possibility of holding live, in person, workshops again like I did before the pandemic. If this is something that interests you, please let me know. My thought would be to hold them at an affordable hotel near the Detroit airport (DTW). But, if you would like to host me to teach a workshop, I would be open to that as well. This week, I want to call your attention to a plot that I would not encourage you to make. This comes form “Targeted...
2 months ago • 4 min read
