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...
8 days 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...
14 days ago • 4 min read
Hey folks! I’m hoping to host two workshops in March and April. The first would be a Zoom-based workshop on the principles of data visualization (I taught a version of this last month). This would be a code-free workshop and would run for about 3 hours. I don’t have a date yet. If you are interested, please reply to this email and let me know if there is a date and time in March that would work best for you. The second would be an in person 3 day workshop taught near the Detroit airport. I...
22 days ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, We had a lot of fun last week with my first workshop on the theory of data visualization! If this is something that you’d be interested in participating in let me know. At this point, I don’t have anything scheduled. So, if you have suggestions for days or times, please let me know This week I have a fun figure to share with you from a paper recently published in Nature Microbiology, titled, “Candida auris skin tropism and antifungal resistance are mediated by carbonic anhydrase...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, Happy 2026! It’s great to be joining you on another trip around the sun as we explore data visualization, R, and reproducible research. Later today I’ll be hosting a workshop on the design of data visualizations. If you register ASAP, I can probably still get you in. If you missed this one, but would like to be notified when I run this workshop again, reply to this email and let me know! This week I found a pretty unique plot type in a paper published in the journal Nature This is...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey folks, What a year! This will be the last newsletter of 2025 and so it’s a natural break point to think back on the year and to look forward to the next. Some highlights for me have been recreating a number of panels from the collection of WEB DuBois visualizations on YouTube, recreating plots from the popular media, and modifying and recreating figures from the scientific literature. I guess you could say 2025 was a year of “recreating”! I have found this approach to making...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Hey folks, As 2025 is winding down, I want to encourage you to think about your goals for 2026! For many people designing an effective visualization and then implementing it with the tool of their choice is too much to take on at once. I think this is why many researchers recycle approaches that they see in the literature or that their mentors insist they use. Of course, this perpetuates problematic design practices. What if you could break out of these practices? What if you could tell your...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, Did you miss me last week? Friday was the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday and I just couldn’t get everything done that I needed to. The result was an extra livestream on the figure I shared in the previous newsletter. If you haven’t had a chance to watch the three videos (one critique, a livestream, and another livestream) from that figure, I really encourage you to. In the first livestream I made an effort to simplify the panels as a set of facets. Towards the end a viewer...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, Did you know that you can do statistics in R? HA! Of course it is. As the first sentence of its Wikipedia entry says, “R is a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization”. I rarely discuss using R for statistical analysis and focus far more attention on the data visualization power of R. This week, I’d like to share a set of panels from a figure in a paper recently published in Nature, “Lymph node environment drives FSP1 targetability in metastasizing...
4 months ago • 6 min read
