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 visualizations to be tremendously beneficial to my own learning of R and thinking about what makes for effective data visualizations. In my interactions with you all, I know many in my audience have had a similar experience.

I’ve also really enjoyed getting into a new cadence for releasing content to you all. The combination of the newsletter introducing and providing a 30,000 ft view of how I’d make a visual, a Monday critique video, and a Wednesday livestream to implement ideas described in the newsletter and critique makes for a nice package. This also roughly approaches my own process of developing visuals for my own work, albeit with more iterations.

I truly welcome your feedback on what you’ve enjoyed and what you would like to see more of. I’m still striving to be better at live-streaming. Unfortunately, occasional challenges with technology and some stage fright can conspire to create interesting outcomes! Please send me your suggestions for scientific figures you’ve found in your reading or types of figures you’re interested in.

What about 2026? The more I look for figures to share with you all, the more I become convinced that we need a lot more deep thinking and training in the design of data visualization without even mentioning how to implement those ideas in R or any other tool.

With this in mind, I’d love to have you join me on January 9th from 1-4 pm (EST) for a workshop on the design of data visualizations. We’ll work on getting you the vocabulary and skills you need to critique your own data visualizations and those of your colleagues. We’ll be using figures I’ll bring along, but you’re more than welcome to bring your own. If you can’t make this workshop, please let me know and I’ll be sure to let you know when I offer the next one. Hopefully, workshops like this can be a foundation for small group and one-on-one coaching to discuss your needs more specifically

As a PI of my own research group I appreciate all that goes into making an effective research presentation or publication. The science is hard enough. But how do we communicate that science? We spend a lot of time training people how to present science orally and in writing. But we don’t do a lot to help each other improve the visual display of our data. I am honored that so many people follow me on YouTube and subscribe to this newsletter! In 2026, I hope I can increase that engagement on a more personal level with many of you through workshops and coaching.

Because I can’t help but giving you something to critique here’s a panel from a figure from a paper titled, “Gut micro-organisms associated with health, nutrition and dietary interventions”, published last week in Nature.

See if you can go through the DAIJ framework to provide a critique of the figure including how you might re-present the data in a more effective manner! If I can swing it with all of the end of the year busyness, I’ll try to post my own thoughts next week on YouTube. Regardless, email me with your own insights.

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