Good and Bad Visualizations

Week 2
8/29/2023

Housekeeping

• Questions from the previous class?
• Take edX class if you don’t have R experience
• Start think about identifying a dataset for your capstone assignment
• Don’t forget about your reflections

Office hours

• Daniel: Fridays 1-2 pm Howlett 340 (email him if you plan to go) or via Zoom
• Jess: Tuesday 11:30 am - 12:30 pm in Howlett 348 or via Zoom
• Those who want to attend office hours virtually, use the same Zoom link for class

What was easier to find?

• good 👏 visualizations
• bad 😡 visualizations

Bad visualizations 😡

Microbiome stacked bar plots at it again

Figure source: Niu, B. et al. (2017). Simplified and representative bacterial community of maize roots. PNAS, 114 (12). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1616148114

Bad COVID is bad

#barbarplots

ggplot can still be bad

The winner of bad visualizations

🏆🏅 Shiva Jahanbakhshi

Good visualizations 👏

Cell expression

Werner, Y., Mass, E., Ashok Kumar, P., Ulas, T., Händler, K., Horne, A., … & Stumm, R. (2020). Cxcr4 distinguishes HSC-derived monocytes from microglia and reveals monocyte immune responses to experimental stroke. Nature neuroscience, 23(3), 351-362.

Sports

Weight loss RCT

Mok J, Adeleke MO, Brown A, et al. Safety and Efficacy of Liraglutide, 3.0 mg, Once Daily vs Placebo in Patients With Poor Weight Loss Following Metabolic Surgery: The BARI-OPTIMISE Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Surg. Published online July 26, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2023.2930

World population

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-the-worlds-population-at-8-billion/

Volcano plot

Land doesn’t vote

The winner of good visualizations

Jeff Eiseman 🏆🏅

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-graph-may-4-2022.html

The winner of good visualizations

Carl Engstrom 🏆🏅

Closing thoughts