Datavis Musings

Thoughts on data visualization, statistical graphics, R programming, and the history of data visualization.

Welcome to Datavis Musings

announcement

Introducing my new blog on data visualization, statistical graphics, and R programming

Apr 20, 2026
Michael Friendly

The Making of Vis-MLM

Vis-MLM
quarto
books

A behind-the-scenes series on writing a technical book with Quarto: choices, surprises, and some hard-won solutions

Apr 26, 2026
Michael Friendly

Creating Book Indexes in Quarto

Vis-MLM
quarto
latex
indexing
books

R helper functions, LaTeX macros, and the underscore problem

Apr 28, 2026
Michael Friendly

Beach Science: A New Field is Born

beach science
humor
science

The practice of lying on a beach towel and allowing fundamental scientific questions to bubble up from the sand and sea around you.

Jun 12, 2026
Michael Friendly

Warm-Up Exercises for the Beach Scientist

beach science
humor
science

Before any good Beach Science can begin, the researcher must calibrate. Four exercises for becoming properly horizontal, attentive, and curious.

Jun 14, 2026
Michael Friendly

BS: How Warm Is “Warm”?

beach science
statistics
humor
heatmap
ridgeline plot

Temperature words are doing quantitative work while pretending to be qualitative. Beach Science and graphics would like to fix this.

Jun 21, 2026
Michael Friendly

BS: Are You a Beach Person or a Pool Person?

beach science
personality
humor

A psychometric instrument disguised as a lifestyle decision, and a proposal for the scientific study of beachiphilia.

Jun 23, 2026
Michael Friendly

Beach Patterns as a Physics Laboratory

beach science
physics
patterns

Sand ripples and sunlit caustics—two beautiful patterns, one deep principle

Jun 27, 2026
Michael Friendly

BS: The Aerodynamics of Not Losing Your Umbrella

beach science
physics
humor

A beach umbrella in wind is a sail on a stick jammed into sand. Beach Science investigates.

Jun 28, 2026
Michael Friendly

Distribution of Determinants of 3×3 Matrices from {1,2,…,9}

R
combinatorics
linear algebra
simulation

Exploring an exact combinatorial result and Monte Carlo approximation for determinants of all permutation matrices of the digits 1–9

Jul 9, 2026
Michael Friendly

Mind Your Chunks

The Care and Feeding of R Code Chunks
Vis-MLM
quarto
knitr
books

Treating a book’s .qmd source files as data: parsing ~670 R code chunks into a queryable data frame to audit code-folding, and other problems

Jul 25, 2026
Michael Friendly

Van Langren’s Secret, Finally Told

History of Statistics
Cryptography
Data Visualization

393 years after van Langren encoded it, an amateur codebreaker gave an answer I never thought to look for

Jul 26, 2026
Michael Friendly

ChatGPT, 1759 Edition

History of Statistics
History of Mathematics
AI
Chevaliers

A 1759 pamphlet by Pierre-Jean Migneret exposes ancient oracles as a lookup table and arithmetic—and accidentally anticipates the architecture of modern AI. A tribute to the friend who found it.

Aug 1, 2026
Michael Friendly

Getting Permissions Right (or at Least Honest)

Field Notes on Tracking Down Image Permissions
Vis-MLM
publishing
copyright
books

Turning a publisher’s six-step permissions process into something a working author can actually track, delegate, and trust – with the tools I used that made it possible

Sep 1, 2026
Michael Friendly

Thinking about Penguin Variables

Bill size and shape as an alternative view of bill length and depth
Vis-MLM
R
multivariate
penguins

Re-expressing penguin bill length and depth as size and shape makes Simpson’s paradox disappear, and shows how an equivalent model can tell a simpler story

Oct 20, 2026
Michael Friendly

Penguin Bodies: Size and Stoutness

Is there a re-expression of flipper length and body mass, like bill size and shape?
Vis-MLM
R
multivariate
penguins

Flipper length and body mass, re-expressed as body size and stoutness: penguins scale up roughly in proportion, a puzzling year effect turns out to be in the flippers, and Gentoo have small bills for their size

Oct 22, 2026
Michael Friendly

Palmer Penguins Cry Out: “Call Me by My Name”

Who are the unusual penguins, what makes each one unusual, and do their nicknames fit?
Vis-MLM
R
multivariate
penguins

Six Palmer penguins with nicknames, from Cara Thompson’s useR! poster and my book. Re-expressing the measures as bill shape and stoutness shows what makes each bird stand out, and whether its name fits

Oct 25, 2026
Michael Friendly

Our World in Multivariate Data

From twelve scatterplots to one multivariate picture of life at different levels of GDP
Vis-MLM
R
multivariate
HE plots
Our World in Data

A multivariate reanalysis of Our World in Data’s chart of life at different levels of GDP, showing what the outcomes share, what income leaves unexplained, and which countries don’t fit

Nov 1, 2026
Michael Friendly
No matching items