Topography Will Tear Us Apart

I feel like this tweet was written just for me.

Unknown Topographies https://t.co/uyNZF9G7TX

— Brian Glaser (@bsglaser) May 29, 2020

(Tip of the cap to Dave Richeson.)

Yet Another Amazing Tiling from Tiling Bot

Tiling Bot has been producing lots of amazing (and often gorgeous) tilings on Twitter. Today's is one of my favorites.

I strongly recommend looking through Tiling Bot's feed.

#Hyperbolic #tiling shown vertex-centered in the orthographic model. Truncated {3,12}. pic.twitter.com/tpsPWqOBOi

— Tiling Bot (@TilingBot) June 24, 2018

Poincaré Disk: Fantasy Edition

I love it!

A surface obtained by gluing six heptagons. Universal cover in the Poincaré model (the same character shown = the same point of the surface). Weapons to show that this is not orientable (it has Euler characteristic -1). Constructed by DivisionByZero [ https://t.co/zgD3J7pG4f ] pic.twitter.com/J1MzJKCkYl

— Zeno Rogue (@ZenoRogue) June 20, 2018

"The Pole Arm of Archaeology" and Other Epic Scholar Visualizations

Dan Hicks posted some epically bad scholar visualizations as a Twitter thread. My favorite one is The Pole Arm of Archaeology, which is about as epic as it sounds. ;)

"The Pole Arm of Archaeology" (1977) #WorstAcademicDiagrams pic.twitter.com/l8pwq6XYdF

— Dan Hicks (@ProfDanHicks) May 16, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Brian Cox.)

The Pulse of Manhattan

Seriously.

The population of #Manhattan, hour-by-hour. #NYC #datavizhttps://t.co/KATB4uq9va pic.twitter.com/ov3xTQlVm0

— Randy Olson (@randal_olson) May 9, 2018

The Multiplex Social–Slayage Network of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Here is the multiplex social–slayage network of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Buffy social network: slayage and love links. https://t.co/xwQ0DoKpAG

— Peter Sheridan Dodds (@peterdodds) March 11, 2018

This figure is definite fodder for talks. Also, if somebody sets up the adjacencies, we should compute some centrality and versatility measures.

Travel Time from London in 1881

This is really cool!

My favorite part of this visualization is for a trip to Africa, as the rapid change in colors once you arrive on the content very nicely and tersely tells you something about the change in transportation mode (and topography, etc.).

I'm sure there are plenty of other similarly interesting things if one looks closely.

This map shows travel time from London in 1881 pic.twitter.com/CbMNxcDEpu

— Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) December 23, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

German Caricature Map from 1914

This German caricature map from the onset of World War I is fancy.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Maps.)

Will Love Tear this Research Apart?

Yes, the actual reason that this type of visualization is now called a "joyplot" is because of the classical Joy Division cover. Sometimes things are right in the world.

Even if love doesn't tear their paper apart, the referees surely will.

I also wrote about this here and here.

Nothing beats the moment of revelation when you suddenly realize why they're called "joyplots". pic.twitter.com/8sbmDWGWg9

— Stuart Ritchie (@StuartJRitchie) August 25, 2017

(Tip of the cap to MathFeed.)

Update (8/27/17): You can also see some discussion of this visualization in my Facebook post.

A Multiplex Network of Relations Between Probability Distributions

OK, quickly: Which distribution is the most central? :)

(There are quite a few comments on the tweet. I haven't looked at them, but I wonder if people are picking apart inaccuracies? I haven't spent the time to vet this diagram, but I really like the idea!)

how probability distributions are related pic.twitter.com/1i8VHEHdy5

— hardmaru (@hardmaru) August 2, 2017

"Survival Bread" and Other Heavily-Pinned Food Items

The most pinned food item (using Pinterest) in Alaska is called "survival bread".

There are several other amusing ones, as you can see in this map.

(Tip of the cap to George Takei.)

Map of Literature's Epic American Road Trips

This visualization of epic American road trips from literature is very cool!

You have walks on networks, you have different ones that you can compare to each other, and you also have descriptions from the authors of these different places.

(Tip of the cap to Bonnie Harland.)

Perceptions of the Probability of Ambiguous Statements

You can completely mess up this chart in the UK simply by using the word "quite". That will do quite an ambiguous number on the perceived probabilities.

(More seriously, I really like this visualization.)

Fantastic enumeration/visualization of qualitative statements re probability via @amandacox https://t.co/XtFnHD2Zgp | @rsimmon @johnjhorton pic.twitter.com/DeByHToazi

— Nicholas Christakis (@NAChristakis) April 25, 2017

Awesome Infographics and Maps of the 1800s

These maps and infographics from the 1800s are spectacular!

(Tip of the cap to Jessica Flack.)

A Hierarchy of Types of Disagreement

I really like this pyramidal visualization of types of disagreement!

Grahams Hierarchy of Disagreement is like a Bloom's Taxonomy of Calling Bullshit.https://t.co/9ZpZ8bsxBD pic.twitter.com/xZIe75Bnub

— Calling Bullshit (@callin_bull) March 4, 2017

Maps of Imaginary Places

Take a look at the fantastic maps of imaginary places in this blog entry by Maria Popova.

Music References on a Map

It will surprise nobody who knows me that I love this map, whose labels consist entirely of music references. I approve!

Some of my favorites are present, of course, though there are others that I wish were included.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Maps.)

2016 U.S. Election Cartograms

Mark Newman has again posted cartograms for the United States election results.

(Mark ought to give those of us who know him a secret link for the sarcastic version.)

Aside from the joy of squishing the continental USA, they also provide a very nice visual way to normalize out by something (population, population density, etc.) to help make maps less misleading.

What is Each Country Number 1 in?

Here is visualization of international #1s, illustrating what each country is "best" at, according to some way of measuring this.

My favorite one (which I have noticed so far) is Sweden, which is the "best" at pop music.

Cue ABBA... (especially playing "Thank You For The Music")


(Tip of the cap to IFLM.)

Time Pie Chart: Postdoc Versus Faculty

Here is a handy pie chart to illustrate what we mean when faculty say that in these respects (we of course are very much aware that there are certain sources of stress that can counteract idealized feelings), postdoc time is the ideal time in an academic's life. That said, being a professor is a great job!

Postdoc vs Assistant Prof. I keep hoping to return to "postdoc mode" of research but this gif has me worried. pic.twitter.com/7HdqyqFMht

— Suchi Saria (@suchisaria) August 6, 2016

(Tip of the cap to Gabor Vattay, who retweeted the above tweet from one of today's speakers in the MBI workshop I'm attending.)