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Michael Friendly

@datavisfriendly.bsky.social

5.8K followers 410 following 1.6K posts

ASA Fellow; #rstats developer of graphical methods for categorical and multivariate data; #datavis history of data visualization; #historicaldatavis; Milestones project Web: www.datavis.ca GitHub: github.com/friendly

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · Aug 24

There's a delicious time in book writing when I switch from actual writing & making graphs to POLISHING-- smoothing language, adding X-references, and improving graphs that don't pass the smell test.

I'm there now with my book, Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models with R.
What a sweet feeling!

Book cover for Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R, featuring an ellipsoid with vectors representing dimensions in multivariate space.

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 13h

Great post by @andrew.heiss.phd on animating #rstats {dplyr} operations

www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2024/04...

Visualizing {dplyr}’s mutate(), summarize(), group_by(), and ungroup() with animations | Andrew Heiss

Visually explore how {dplyr}’s more complex core functions work together to wrangle data

www.andrewheiss.com

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 13h

Cool. I didn't know about the axis dodge trick

scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(n.dodge = 2))

IBD Doctor @ibddoctor.bsky.social · 1d

Every once in a while I need to fiddle with long category labels in #rstats ggplot2.
It always helps me to refer back to this excellent blog post by #AndrewHeiss @cararthompson.bsky.social
www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2022/06...

Quick and easy ways to deal with long labels in ggplot2 | Andrew Heiss

Explore different manual and automatic ways to rotate, dodge, recode, break up, and otherwise deal with long axis labels with ggplot2

www.andrewheiss.com

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Reposted by Michael Friendly

Jan Broder Engler @jbengler.de · 1d

Being free and open-source, this is how you can support #tidyplots ❤️

tidyplots.org
github.com/jbengler/tid...

#rstats #dataviz #phd

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 14h

But worse-- the width of the stairs to your basement. Years ago, I had to disassemble a dryer to get it down there 😬

Jordan Nafa @jordannafa.bsky.social · 17h

Pro-tip: Measure the width of your front door before you buy appliances. Learned this lesson the hard way 😮‍💨

Reposted by Michael Friendly

Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · 16h

😅

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Reposted by Michael Friendly

Jan Broder Engler @jbengler.de · 1d

This is how you can add normal data ellipses in #tidyplots 🐣

#rstats #dataviz #phd

library(tidyplots)

pca |>
tidyplot(x = pc1, y = pc2, color = group) |>
add_data_points() |>
add_ellipse()

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Reposted by Michael Friendly

Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 17h

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 15h

😍
But maybe precision = invariance (inverse var)

Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 16h

missed opportunity to rename all dispersion measures following the same scheme

OG variance = squariance
SD = stairiance (also known as rootsquariance)
Gini = fairiance
IQR = iquariance (pronounced with a schwa, like "aquarius")
MAD = marriance
precision = prairiance
etc

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 1d

This is SO AMAZING! Data Vandals rock!

Jason Forrest @jasonforrest.bsky.social · 1d

We are simply delighted to have the opportunity to share with the commuters of the LA region. There's really a lot to discuss in the exhibition, and we hope you can check it out for yourself! More info here: art.metro.net/artworks/exh...

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Reposted by Michael Friendly

Bjørn Sætrevik @drsatrevik.bsky.social · Jul 1

Could it be this one (assuming that "psychologists" are a subset of "humans"): Halford, G. S., Baker, R., McCredden, J. E., & Bain, J. D. (2005). How Many Variables Can Humans Process? Psychological Science, 16(1), 70-76. doi.org/10.1111/j.09...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

doi.org

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 1d

A nice, simple analogy and explanation

I Love Science! @ilovescience.bsky.social · 3d

The importance of uncertainty in measurement #statistics #reality #truth

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 1d

Didn't know of this. There's a cute Tower of Hanoi animator there

Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 1d

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊
🎂Oct 6, 1784 Baron Pierre Charles Dupin born, Varzy, Nievre, France 🇫🇷

1819-1826: Choropleth map with shadings from black to white (distribution and intensity of illiteracy in France), the first (unclassed) choropleth map, & perhaps the first modern statistical map

Dupin's choropleth map of France showing literacy in each department by intensity of shading (black = lowest)

Portrait of Charles Dupin seated at a desk with his map partially under a book

Reposted by Michael Friendly

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 2d

Every Trump speech now produces approximately two dozen 30-second clips peppering the feed that each alone should trigger impeachment or 25th amendment proceedings and are indistinguishable from what your worst uncle would produce if he had any idea how to make ai-generated videos

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 2d

🇨🇦 Blue Jays trounce the 🇺🇸 Yankees, AGAIN

Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 2d

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊
🎂Oct 5, 1864 Louis Lumière born in Besancon, France 🇫🇷
Let there be #MOVIES :

1895: First movie, with the cinématographe, using the principle of intermittent movement of film

Photo of Louis Lumiere posing next to one of his projectors

The Lumiere's cinématographe. Looks like a wooden box with a camera lens on a tripod.

The Lumiere projector, featuring a strip of film hand wound past a projector lens

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 4d

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊
📅Oct 2, 1608 Hans Lippershey --- Developed the 1st known telescope, in the Netherlands 🇳🇱

(Within 2 years, Gallileo made his own and made many discoveries -- rings of Saturn, moons of Jupiter, ...)

Lippershey's telescope, It consists of a long with a lens on one end and a smaller tube mounted on a globe into which the first could be inserted and pointed to the heavens.

Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 4d

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊
💀Oct 2, 2002 Heinz Von Foerster died in Pescadero, California, USA 🇺🇸

1930: Table of historical events drawn on logarithmic paper, changing the default linear view of history. Milestone in visualizing time!

View of historical events on a logarithmic timelines, so that events closer some origin (the present) get more visual space

Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 4d

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊
🎂Oct 2, 1854 Patrick Geddes born in Ballatar, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

1892: Social data, diagrams, ..., incorporated in a museum- Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

Geddes now hailed as the father of town planning, but social graphics was part of this @datavandals.bsky.social

Scottish geographer, biologist, sociologist and town planner Patrick Geddes bought a tower next to the Edinburgh Castle in 1892. In over 20 years, he transformed it into an inhabitable device to illustrate his thoughts on visual faculties and the relationship between the individual and the exterior reality.

Diagram of exhibits layout for Outlook Tower

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 4d

The stuff on Quarto playing nice with LaTeX is very useful, even if not for a thesis or if not using Zotero 👍

Cameron Patrick @cameronpat.bsky.social · 4d

This is how I integrate Quarto and Zotero with minimal suffering (long rambling post, scroll down to the section on bibliography or search for Zotero): cameronpatrick.com/post/2023/07...

Cameron Patrick - Some Quarto PDF formatting tips, with particular reference to thesis writing

I’ve just spent most of a day faffing around trying to get Quarto to produce a nice PDF file that I like the look of and which meets my university’s formatting requirements for a PhD thesis. Maybe my ...

cameronpatrick.com

Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 5d

Interrupting the usual #datavis #rstats broadcast:

📰ANNOUNCE: Big Day here -- 📘📗📕

✔️Finished final editing and tweaks on my book
✔️re-built PDF & web versions,
✔️clicked SEND to forward to my editor.
✔️Published the online version
✔️DONE, for now: Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R

Image of the online version of Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 7d

Interesting #dataviz #rstats post listed there,

Analyzing ICE Arrest Data
jef.works/blog/2025/09...

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Reposted by Michael Friendly

Francois Keck @francoiskeck.bsky.social · 8d

If doughnuts are coming back into fashion, let me bring this one back. #rstats #ShowYourStripes #ShowYourTorus

Climate stripes projected on a 3d torus.

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 7d

Microsoft of course ignores the contributions of e.g., VisiCalc ("visible calculator") in ~1978 and Lotus 1-2-3 ~1983.

The graphic extension of this idea was called Spreadplots by Forrest Young--linked and manipulable plots and tables in his ViSta ("visible statistics") software based on xlispstat

Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 7d

I would have expected more posting from the #dataviz community about the 40 years of Excel (today). It was and remains a foundational tool. (test of time IIB award perhaps?)

This list of practical tips looks amazing. All from practitioners.

techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/excelbl...

Excel Turns 40: Join the Celebration! | Microsoft Community Hub

This year marks a major milestone—Microsoft Excel turns 40! In honor of four decades of innovation, we’re kicking off “40 Days of Excel”, a global community...

techcommunity.microsoft.com

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 7d

Also of interest to me is:

* how formula syntax has developed to a symbolic notation for graphics, as in `y ~ x1 + x2 | group` in quite a few packages, and
* the {Formula} 📦 which extends the Wilkinson-Rogers notation in other ways

econmaett @econmaett.github.io · 7d

Cool blog (post) by @economictricks.bsky.social about Rs formula syntax
www.econometrics.blog/post/the-r-f...

Also check out @emitanaka.org‘s paper below
arxiv.org/pdf/1911.08628

#econsky #rstats

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