Hey folks, I’m really enjoying sharing with you my 30,000 foot view of how I would go about making figures that I find in the “wild”. Following up on these emails with a couple of related YouTube videos has been a lot of fun for me. Of course if you find any figures you like, send them my way - I love seeing what interests you all. I was reminded recently though that not everyone feels enough confidence with their R and tidyverse skills to keep up. Sorry! Towards the bottom of this email I...
9 days ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, We’re still slogging our way through Thanksgiving leftovers. As time passes from last Thursday, there’s a fine line between setting a good example about not wasting food and setting a bad example by getting every food poisoning! Speaking of eating, our teeth are pretty important, don’t you think? In the US, Trump’s expected head for the Department of Health and Human Services has a number of interesting views about health. One example is that its a bad idea to spike our drinking...
16 days ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, Next week is Thanksgiving here in the US and I’ll skip sending you another newsletter. In exchange, you’ll get three videos on YouTube inspired by a newsletter post from October talking about a descending bar plot with a pattern in one of the bars. Before you thank me, you might want to check out today’s newsletter🤣! I’ve always enjoyed the old 538’s articles and appreciated the data centric point of view of its founder Nate Silver. He has a Substack newsletter, “Silver Bulletin”,...
30 days ago • 5 min read
Hey folks, I have long since given up trying to anticipate what types of videos will resonate with people on YouTube. One of my most popular videos shows people how to make stacked bar plots. Throughout it, I tell people that these are a horrible way to visualize data. It’s my third most viewed video. I thought a video on slope plots would be popular. Nope. People panned last week’s episode. But Venn diagrams - holy cats! People are really geeking out about this week’s episodes on Venn...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, I’m really grateful for the people who have emailed me recently to thank me for making the recreation and makeover videos. I’ve been excited to see the types of figures some of you are trying to make. It’s really been a great part of this work for me. Thank you! Eric Hill is a loyal Riffomonas Channel viewer who recently sent me an animation he made using the p5.js platform. The animation shows his son’s performance relative to other runners in the prestigious Nike Cross Nationals...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, One of the benefits of sending out these newsletters and making my YouTube videos is that I get a ton of practice. I can’t emphasize how much practice has paid off in learning to use dplyr, ggplot2, and other packages. Reproducing published figures has really helped me to dive into parts of ggplot2 that I wouldn’t normally use because I make plots that use the features of ggplot2 that I know. By expanding my knowledge of ggplot2, I’m finding that the plots I make from scratch are...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Hey folks, I hope you’re enjoying my new approach of integrating the newsletter with my YouTube videos. The feedback I’ve gotten has been very positive. Thank you! I’d love it if you were to reply to this email with a link to the most recent figure you found in your reading of the literature or popular media. This week, I’m sharing with you Figure 5D from a paper recently published in mSystems by Charlie Bayne and colleagues where they looked at the effect of interactions between tryptophan...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey folks, At long last the {phylotypr} R package is on CRAN! I posted a video on Wednesday describing the process of submitting the package. Then on Thursday, I submitted a manuscript to Microbiology Resource Announcements that describes the package. Hopefully, it will be published soon. MRA is a pretty nifty journal that published short (~500 words) articles describing resources that microbiologists might find useful. There aren’t supposed to be any results, just a description of the...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey folks, I’ve submitted (and re-submitted and re-re-submitted!) the {phylotypr} R package that I’ve been developing on the YouTub channel. I’m optimistic that {phylotypr} should be on CRAN in the next few days. With that, I’ll be moving on to a new strategy with my videos. My plan is to take the narrative that I present in these newsletters and go through the process of re-producing the figures I discuss. I recorded the first one yesterday and I think you’ll really like this new series. Can...
2 months ago • 7 min read
