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Michael Friendly

@datavisfriendly.bsky.social
6.3K followers 495 following 2.7K 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 · 2h
A nice study of 'dataset forensics' .... Just look at this diff chart
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 2h
If you are already a DVS (free) member, take the next step to paid and help support the important (and beautiful!) work of the Data Visualization Society.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 4h
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 29, 1829 Michael George Mulhall born in Dublin, Ireland 🇮🇪 1884: 🥇1st? use of a pictogram, to represent data by icons proportional to a number The train one is accurate; the wheel one commits the area illusion, using diameter to represent the number
Capital employed in 1882  in France, UK and US, portrayed by trains whose length is ~ to the numberPictograms displaying Steam power (top) and horsepower per 1000 inhabitants by wheels whose diameter is proportional to the number representedPhoto of Michael Mulhall looking to his right and wearing a long beard
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Andreas Brandmaier @brandmaier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ever looked at your graph and thought: this needs a more dramatic exit strategy? Make your R base plots self-destruct with style. If you must, download here: github.com/brandmaier/d... #RStats #DataVisualization #RProgramming #DataScience #OpenSource #AcademicHumor #noAI
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Grant McDermott @gmcd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 v0.8.0 now available on CRAN 🎉 grantmcdermott.com/tinyplot/ This is another big release: new plot types, finer facet & axis control, smarter handling of categorical data, and lots more. Same tiny footprint, though. Short highlight thread below 🧵 #rstats
Heatmap of the mtcars dataset, scaled within each column. Code: https://github.com/grantmcdermott/tinyplot/blob/main/vignettes/gallery_figs/heatmap-mtcars.RHistogram of New York temperatures, with bars coloured by their own x values. Code: plt(~ Temp | Temp, data = airquality, type = "hist", theme = "classic")Hexbin plot of 20,000 bivariate normal draws. Code: https://github.com/grantmcdermott/tinyplot/blob/main/vignettes/gallery_figs/hexbin.RStacked area plot of telephones in use by world region, 1956-1961. Code: plt(WorldPhones[-1, ], type = type_area(stack = TRUE, byord = "end"))
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Way cool. Georgy Voronoy would approve en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_...
en.wikipedia.org
Georgy Voronoy - Wikipedia
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CRAN Package Updates Bot @cranberriesfeed.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
New CRAN package ggCheysson with initial version 1.0.1 #rstats cran.r-project.org/package=ggCheyss…
cran.r-project.org
CRAN: Package ggCheysson
Implements for 'ggplot2' the stylistic elements (fonts, hatched patterns, color palettes) used by 'Emile Cheysson' in the 'Albums de Statistique Graphique', sometimes called the pinnacle of the Golden Age of Statistical Graphics.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 26, 1934 Vincent P. Barabba born in Chicago, IL, USA 🇺🇸 1973-76: Revival of statistical graphics innovation by U.S. Bureau of the Census (After the Walker's Statistical Atlas of the US, interest in graphics died out ~1900) Interview with Barabba: bit.ly/3IxZs3S
www2.census.gov
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Re-created versions of Moses Harris’s color wheels (published in 1766!) by the always-delightful @rougeux.bsky.social www.c82.net/natural-colo... #color #dataviz
vintage color wheel of prismatic colors (red, yellow, blue).Vintage color wheel of compound colors (orange, purple, green).
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
On Dolly Parton Day, I'm remember how she... -Gifted millions of free books to kids -Ensured musicians she worked with got union benefits -Helped fund medical research and the COVID vaccine -Donated millions to communities hit by natural disasters -Funded high school band programs She is missed!
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 💀Sep 25, 1777 Johann Heinrich Lambert died in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 1760: Curve-fitting and interpolation from empirical data points 1772: Developed diagrams to represent color systems. See: Bullynck, bit.ly/3JxKmvi, bit.ly/4g5Hy4H
ALT: J. H. Lambert’s chart of the variation in soil temperatures at various latitudes over time. The horizontal axis represents time within a year using astronomical symbols.
Source: Johann Heinrich Lambert, Pyrometrie; oder, vom maasse des feuers und der wärme mit acht kupfertafeln. Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1779.
The J. H. Lambert color pyramid, or Farbenpyramide, created by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1772, was the first three-dimensional color model. 
It shows a total of 107 colours on six different levels, variously combining red, yellow and blue pigments, and with an increasing amount of white to provide the vertical component.
Portrait of J. H. Lambert, in profile looking to the left.
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Deborah Lee-Talbot @colourfulhistories.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You would think, after four years of this commercial AI-BS I could write a set of guidelines for historians without being interrupted by tech-bros confessing to something stupid. This means I then have to -research the stupid act - explain the stupid act - remind historians they have ethics.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You wrote a brilliant article in 3,850 words; your editor wants 2,500. What counts as a word? How to count them? My #rstats wordcount() function counts the rendered .docx by section: body text vs. headings, footnotes, captions, tables, refs. Mine: body 2,484. Whew! 👨‍💻https://tinyurl.com/252q6f3z
tinyurl.com
What counts as a word? Count a .docx by section and category (body, headings, footnotes, captions, tables, references) the way your editor sees it — R
What counts as a word? Count a .docx by section and category (body, headings, footnotes, captions, tables, references) the way your editor sees it — R - README.md
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#rstats Want to learn to make mosaic plots?📊 My students Gabriel Crone & Naomi Gutierrez updated their Shiny app for interactive mosaic displays. Upload data, choose a log-linear model, customize display, download publication-quality PNG/SVG & R code Try it! fohpsyc.shinyapps.io/Shiny-Mosaics/
fohpsyc.shinyapps.io
Shiny Mosaics
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 24, 1501 Gerolamo Cardano born in Pavia, Italy 🇮🇹 1562: Computation of probabilities. Liber de Ludo Alaea, a practical guide to gambling, containing the first systematic computation of probabilities (& a how-to on cheating)
Portrait of Gerolamo Cardano
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 📅Sep 23, 1884 Herman Hollerith filed his first patent application, titled "Art of Compiling Statistics" leading to punched cards and counter-sorter machines. Later called "IBM cards" ✋Raise your hand if you ever used a keypunch machine 👀https://bit.ly/46ElWZp
Herman Hollerith seated at a card punch machine. At the back are cards that have been sorted into binsPhoto of Herman Hollerith, with a very bushy moustache
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My latest @newscientist.com cartoon. many more here: www.newscientist.com/author/tom-gauld/
Image: A graph with lots of red dots clustered together in a curve. The are all looking upwards at a single red dot wearing sunglasses. 

Caption: Mike was an outlier and would probably be excluded from the study, but all the other data points secretly thought he was really cool.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
@infowetrust.com turns the @davidrumsey.bsky.social Map Library staircase into a a piece of art I WANT TO HOLD and FOLD. substack.com/@infowetrust...
substack.com
RJ Andrews (@infowetrust)
I made a pop-up.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The hollow bars convey more info to my eyes. Unfilling them here seems a win
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Could be a game changer for diverging color palettes
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 💀Sep 23, 1938 Maurice d'Ocagne died, Havre, France 🇫🇷 1884: The first alignment diagrams, using sets of parallel axes, rather than axes at right angles; ▶️ the essential ideas used in parallel coordinates plots ▶️ nomography: graphical computation of complex functions
Photo portrait of Maurice d'Ocagne in his military uniform, in his student days at the Ecole PolytechniqueA page from D'Ocagne's book, Coordonnées parallèles et axiales. Méthode de transformation géométrique et procédé nouveau de calcul graphique déduits de la considération des coordonnées parallèlles
From his 1899 Traité de Nomographie: The purpose of Nomography is to reduce to simple readings on graphical charts, constructed once for all, the computations which necessarily intervene in the practice of various technical arts.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 23, 1915 George Alfred Barnard born in Walthamstow, London, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 1969: Suggestion for displaying five variables by means of movements on a CRT. This technical advance created new possibilities for high-D visualization See: tinyurl.com/ymynzjdp
tinyurl.com
Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization
Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization
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Jon Harmon (he/him/his) @jonthegeek.com · 22/09/2026
I've had some helpful/hopeful replies in this thread (eg bsky.app/profile/hadl...). I also finally read this blog by @hadley.nz substack.com/home/post/p-... , and I wish he'd done part 1 of that talk one more time at #PositConf2026! It would've helped to offset some of the other AI. #RStats #dataBS
substack.com
y code when ai?
A talk on AI and coding
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Something else spotted here:
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Maps of magnetic fields!
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂 Sep 22, 1759 William Playfair born in Dundee, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 PLAYFAIR DAY -- he's 267 today He is the father of modern data graphics: 1786: Invention of the line graph and bar chart 1801: Invented the pie chart
Playfair's Chart of the National debt of England, a time-series line graph with annotations of events that explain increases over timePlayfair (1805) pie chart of the sizes of US states (red) and territories in North America (green)
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 22, 1791 Michael Faraday born in Newington Butts, Surrey, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 1820-1835: Graphical analysis applied to natural phenomena (electric and magnetic lines of force, weather, tides) Made these invisible constructs open to inspection 👓
Diagram of magnetic fields surrounding one or two magnets in various positionsDiagram illustrating magnetic induction fields around + and - polesEngraved portrait of Michael Faraday, holding a cigar? No -- a magnet
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Maybe my PhD in Psych can help here: There's the rub, if you're a Normal kind of guy. Just start to imagine yourself as belonging to a +skewed distribution, that can put you into a longer tail, with a bunch of friends to rock on.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Doesn't do much for the flags, but makes a nice demonstration of how PCA works on a collection of images
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 📅The First International Statistical Congress held on Sept 19, 1853 in Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪 Organized mainly by Adolphe Quetelet,; 26 countries sent representatives. Some main goals: standardization of measurements and tables; establish national statistical bureaus
Portrait of Adolphe Quetelet, Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and statisticianALT: Portrait of William Farr (1807–1883) a pioneering British epidemiologist, representative at the meetings of the Congress
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 19, 1876 Max Otto Lorenz born in Burlington, Iowa, USA 🇺🇸 1905: Lorenz curve (cumulative distribution by rank order, to facilitate study of concentrations, income distribution) It was an undergrad paper!
A graph representing the Lorenz curve. It plots two cumulative distributions, for example wealth (Y) vs population (X). The degree to which the Lorenz curve rises above the diagonal line reflects inequality
B/W photo of Max Lorenz
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm an Old Hand LaTeX guy, now writing more in #Quarto, with {tinytex} at my side. Who's this new Typst kid? Do I want to learn a new language? Donald Knuth was so confident of TeX-- design frozen, vers 3.14, 3.145, only approaching \pi. Enter: A newer kid on the block, "ratex" bit.ly/4h1jP7Z
leoliu0.github.io
Why I Built ratex: Modernizing TeX While Waiting for Typst — Leo Liu
Typst is the future of typesetting, but academic journals and arXiv still mandate legacy LaTeX. Why I built ratex in pure Rust to eliminate auxiliary file clutter, cryptic errors, and tool fragmentati...
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 💀Sep 18, 1783 Leonhard Euler died in Saint Petersburg, Russia 🇷🇺 Among many other things.... 1752: Introduced a notation for which gives coordinates of every possible point in 3D space, (x,y,z).
Diagram, after Euler, showing coordinates (X,Y,Z) together with angles showing 3D vectors under rotationColor portrait of Leonhard Euler
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Why is this graph an epic FAIL?
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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Teaching Latent Class Analysis at @unibas.ch today using tidySEM 0.2.12! Basic LCA for continuous, ordinal, and nominal indicators; confirmatory LCA, latent class growth analysis, auxiliary variables, and custom models. Follow along at home using the open coursebook: cjvanlissa.github.io/lca_course/
cjvanlissa.github.io
Latent Class Analysis
Book Description
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
An incredibly gorgeous & detailed #map of Upper Canada, from Quebed to Lake Huron by James Wyld (a Royal Geographer), 1838 Someone drew lines separating Canada into administrative districts; I always wonder why they run SE -> NW 👀https://www.davidrumsey.com/maps3223.html
 Full Title: A Map of the Province of Upper Canada, describing all the new settlements, townships, &c. with the countries adjacent from Quebec to Lake Huron. Compiled from the original documents in the Surveyor General's Office. London, Published by Jas. Wyld, Geographer to Her Majesty, Charing Cross East. 1838.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Vision science: The difference between Rod Stewart and Cone Stewart finally clarified
Two photos of the singer Rod Stewart, left: B/W labelled Rod Stewart; right: color, labelled Cone Stewart
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Alberto Cairo @albertocairo.com · 16/09/2026
New in the Open Visualization Academy newsletter: "The UMAP Isn't the Territory" by Michela Tjan openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/the-umap-i... #dataViz #infographics #dataJournalism #dataVisualization See all our courses and tutorials: openvisualizationacademy.org
openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com
The UMAP Isn't the Territory
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Armine Yalnizyan @armineyalnizyan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Let the games begin www.reuters.com/live/live-fe...
reuters.com
Live: Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates and flagged further increases in borrowing costs in coming months, with new U.S. central bank chief Kevin Warsh joining a unanimous decision that effectively ...
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Recursive self-improvement of AI visualized Now I understand what the hype is all about
A nail anchored in a block of stone, with an arm and hand holding a hammer, ready to pound it in further
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CRAN Updates @cranupdates.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New on CRAN: ggmosaic2 (0.5.1). View at CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggmosaic2
cran.r-project.org
ggmosaic2: Mosaic Plots in the 'ggplot2' Framework, Extended
Mosaic plots in the 'ggplot2' framework. Mosaic plot functionality is provided in a single 'ggplot2' layer by calling the geom 'mosaic'. This extends the now-defunct 'ggmosaic' package by allowing fitted loglinear models which can be used to show patterns of association among variables in frequency tables.
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RJ Andrews @infowetrust.com · 15/09/2026
We are open-sourcing dbt Charts: a clear language for describing and rendering dashboards from a single YAML file. It makes smarter, prettier dashboards that you own, all while saving you tokens. 📈 dbtCharts.com
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Dr Mircea Zloteanu 🌺🌞🍃 @mzloteanu.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
#statstab #617 Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look Thoughts: Great overview of the "controlling for" issue in multiple regression #regression #inference #covariates #multivariable #guide #adjustment #causalinference rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...
rpsychologist.com
Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look | R Psychologist
An interactive article about how regression adjustment works and the pitfalls of conditional associations in descriptive studies.
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 15/09/2026
🌐 The internet doesn’t remember everything. CARTA Presents: “DIGITAL GHOSTS - ACCESS TO WEB ARCHIVES THROUGH DATA AND CREATIVITY” looks at how creative visualization can make online decay visible, and what disappearance means for cultural memory. Oct. 7, 8 AM PT 🎟️ us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Photo of a panel discussion at a "Digital Ghosts" event. Four panelists sit in red and gray chairs against a wall with projected text reading "Digital Ghosts" and "Dorsey, Kaufmann & Feeling Data." A large seated audience fills the foreground, with blue lighting throughout the gallery-like space.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 15, 1879 Leonard Porter Ayres born in Niantic, Connecticut, USA 🇺🇸 1919: Social statistical chartbook, containing a variety of graphic and semi-graphic displays in a USA Government report. (These ideas influenced JW Tukey's EDA) 👀 archive.org/details/warw...
A histogram of the American army divisions in France during World War I. The histogram bars are made of numbers identifying the divisions. This was one inspiration for Tukey's stem-and-leaf displays
From: The War with Germany: A Statistical Summary, published in 1919 by Leonard P. Ayres Casualties suffered by US Army divisions during World War I, shown in numbers and in shaded bars indicating killed vs wounded.Photo of Leonard Porter Ayres in his army uniform
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A colleague sent this-- best #Psychology #Joke #Coffeecup I've seen in a long time...
Coffee cup with a picture of Sigmund Freud (wearing red glasses)
Text says:
   Ego and Super-ego walk into a bar
   Bartender says, I'm going to need to see some ID
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
📊 #rstats #dataviz My ggCheysson package was just re-submitted to CRAN 🤞 @infowetrust.com Brings the graphic style of Émile Cheysson's Albums de Statistique Graphique (1880s) to ggplot2: authentic color palettes, hatching patterns, and hand-drawn fonts. 🔗https://friendly.github.io/ggCheysson/
A 5x5 grid of thumbnail crops from Émile Cheysson's original 1880s-1900s statistical maps and diagrams, each labeled with its album year and plate number (e.g. "1880 MAP 7", "1906 MAP 50"), showing pie charts, bar charts, flow maps, and choropleth maps overlaid on maps of France and its regions in muted historical colors. Image from: @infowetrust
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a study statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/09/14/t...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a study | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
von Humboldt was so much more: polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, graphic designer. Here's another of my favorites, showing the distribution of plants by elevation. You can zoom in on the original: bit.ly/3sWbWtR
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 14, 1769 Alexander von Humboldt born in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 🥇1817: First graph of isotherms, showing mean temperature around the world by latitude and longitude. An important step: mapping the invisible; 2D suggests 3D
Humboldt defined an isotherm as a curve connecting points on a globe that receive the same amount of heat. Vertical axis here is latitude, horizontal is longitude
Isotherms represented on a world map, with colored zones of equal temperaturePortrait of Alexander von Humboldt
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