Sick of Fearmongering

As of this writing, China is battling a fierce outbreak of a new coronavirus, which is also threatening to spread to other parts of the world. It’s scary. And that means it is also very important to keep things in perspective. Panicking and overreacting will make things worse for everyone, including yourself. Which brings me to this map showing the spread of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. This and several more like it have been featured in articles from The Sun. [Read More]

Building Better Plots

Consider the lowly chart. Chances are you have seen quite a few, perhaps in advertisements, news, reports, or papers. You have probably even made a few yourself for school or work. There was a time when making such figures was an arduous chore. But now every spreadsheet program worth its salt can quickly plot its data, and several programs and libraries are dedicated to plotting charts. A small montage of plots. [Read More]

VisLies 2013

The IEEE Visualization conference is just wrapping up, and this year I had the distinct pleasure of helping Bernice Rogowitz and Georges Grinstein in bringing back the Vis Lies event. It’s my favorite activity at vis that was disappointingly missing the past two years. I’m happy to say that it is back and as much fun as ever. For those who haven’t had the distinct pleasure of attending, Vis Lies is a meeting where we share examples of lying and confusing with visualization. [Read More]