As a graduate student, I have learned to appreciate data, logic, and the scientific method. The core courses in our biomedical engineering program involve lots of good biology, reading, writing and 'rithmatic. We are encouraged study good scientific publications. Then, we are asked to go and to do world class research and publish our findings. We get lots of practice writing (grants, fellowships, reports, reviews, and papers, papers, papers). We get lots of practice reading. We get lots of practice interpreting figures and analyzing data. What I have found, though, is that graphic design doesn't come up much in the core scientific training, or what I'll call "scientific graphic design".
I never learned how to make beautiful figures.
And beautiful figures are the heart of scientific communication. Sure, we can all generate a halfhearted plot in Excel using default settings. But making publication-quality figures--even more, making figures that will draw your audience in, and help them care about your work--is a whole different ball game, and is rarely taught.
This blog is an attempt to fill that gaping hole in science education, and hopefully provide a community resource that will benefit all of us who appreciate a good figure, but struggle to make one.
Content
The content falls into two main categories: theory and practice.
The theory side discusses the general principles of visualizing data in an appealing and interpret-able way.
The practice side discusses how to make that theory happen. Posts will present workflows: how to get from data to drop-dead-gorgeous graphs, showing what tools to use and the steps to use them. While there are lots of graphic design tools out there, these workflows put them into the context of scientific visualization, and how tools complement each other in the visualization process.
Finally, we will link out to good resources as we learn about them. These may be be new tools, tutorials, commentaries on how to present data better, or just good examples to learn from.
- All data and code for these workflows and tutorials is hosted at the blog's bitbucket repository.
- Drop us an email if you have a great workflow to share with the world, if you happen to know a graph-making guru, or if you have a great example of data visualization! Contact me at mattbbiggs [at] gmail [dot] com.
- Share your success! Post your figures and give a shout-out to the workflows that you found helpful.
All the best,
Eats, Graphs and Leaves Team
No comments:
Post a Comment