I tracked two-digit authentication codes for two years after suspecting a subtle bias toward higher values. Using simple visualizations, standard statistical tests, and simulation as a reality check, this post explores how easy it is to see structure in randomness and how hard it is to prove it.

Experiments with a new “quintile area” strip plot, prompted by skewed box plots in a biology paper, ended up clarifying why box plots remain so robust.

Charting Greenland Ice sheet melt data from two sources of raw data.

An exploration of radar charts from a recent Nature article, tracing the path from radars to fitted sigmoidal curves to alternate derived summary views.

Here’s another case in the wild of beeswarm jitter using clamped bounds that hide the distribution of the data. This one has a twist in that a large proportion of the data values are zero.

Comparing NCAA football players’ NFL draft rates with their high school composite ratings

Someone once quipped that I only read journal articles by looking at the pictures. I admit the graphs are the first things I look at. Next I check the data availability statement, to see if I can better understand the graphs with a little exploratory analysis. After that, I might also read the text of…

Throughout my quests for raw data, I’ve learned a few techniques for find data lurking behind the charts. This walk-through shows a few of them,

I built a “Data Strips” app to experiment with new ways of graphically summarizing the distribution of a single variable.. You can try it out or access the code on GitHub. This post will introduce the app and summarize the views.

Do the insights gained from ternary data organization require a ternary chart?