The Mathematics of Marbling

Aubrey Jaffer has done some really cool mathematical art in the mathematics of marbling. Also see the art in other parts of the website. Very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Alex Bateman.)

Imperial Tie Fighters in Chemistry Publications

Yes, really. I am amused. :)

Infographics on Shakespearian Deaths

I love these Tufte-ian infographics on deaths in Shakespearean tragedies, especially the one for the bloodbath Titus Andronicus.

As I mentioned previously on my blog, Shakespearean deaths have also been tabulated in pie-chart form.

Tales from the ArXiv: Modern Art

It is usually a good idea to preview the compiled file when you upload a paper to the arXiv. (The topic of the paper looks interesting, by the way.)

Otherwise, all of your figures might be plastered over each other on the same page.

Catalog Graphics

For the next couple of years, the front and back covers of the book catalog from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics will be featuring graphics from my research (created using visualization tools that we developed in-house).

Only look at the front and back pages of the linked file. I doubt many of you will want to go through the whole file. :)

Tracking Break-Ups via Facebook Status Updates

Here is a CNN.com article about a journalist and graphic designer who minded Facebook status updates to try to discern when people broke up the most. (And, of course, this is a sensible way to do that. On a similar note, one of my collaborators is involved in a project that tracks the nation's moods---and, e.g., election updates---by following tweets.) However, I don't understand the plot that goes with the article. There is supposed to be a spike around Christmas, but the graphic that goes with the article clearly does not show such a spike. What gives?

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Here is a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.

(Tip of the cap to Mark Rogers.)

Visualization of Communities in Networks

The paper version of our winning entry in the 2009 Gallery of Nonlinear Images was published today. You can also check out the poster version.

Is theoretical and/or computational work actually physics?

\begin{rant}

This is going to be a rant because I just saw something that (as a matter of principle) really pisses me off.

The American Physical Society (APS) recently sent an e-mail to all its members asking for nice physics images to put on its website. I, in fact, have quite a few of those from my research (including two items that have been selected as winners in the APS March Meeting's Gallery of Nonlinear Images), so I figured I would submit some of my stuff and see if the relevant people were interested in any of them. It turns out that they weren't. That's fine, because people can choose whatever images they want and whether they like or dislike something is essentially arbitrary. What really chaps my hide is the grounds on which I was rejected. Namely, no graphs, diagrams, models, or animations are permitted. In other words, to even be eligible in the first place, apparently the work has to be experiment. That is (a) extremely myopic and (b) horseshit. The e-mail I received included the following message:


"Home page images are selected because they are:
Beautiful, striking, or interesting
Current (January 2007 - Present)
Not animations
Not graphs or diagrams
Not models
Photographs of phenomena not people
Owned by the submitter
At least 500 pixels wide x 225 pixels high in good resolution"


I was then told that my stuff had to be rejected because they were graphs, animations, etc. So unless I am completely missing something, it really does seem like all theoretical and computational pictures are rejected a priori. That is utter tripe.

What this reminds me of (because it reflects the same attitude) is one of the referee reports I once received on a (theoretical and computational) paper that I submitted to Physical Review Letters. The referee said that the work was very nice but that it shouldn't be published in PRL because there weren't any experiments in it. I think perhaps the best response I can give here is to quote what George Takei said to William Shatner in a recent roast: "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on!"

\end{rant}