Graphs, happiness, and XKCD

Hirano et al, "Roles of Zinc and Zinc Signalling in Immunty" Advances in Immunology, 2008

Fukada et al, "Zind Homeostastis and Signalling in Health and Disease."  J of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, 2011

 I like visual arts.   I was always drawing as a kid, and took some classes in art and design in high school and college that were both challenging and rewarding.  Ultimately, my interest in science and medicine won over my interest in art:  I graduated undergrad with a degree in Chemistry, and I'm now excited to be in the Immunobiology program here.  However, I still have an itch for the arts, and I like to sketch, draw, and visit museums (Cincinnati Art Museum and CAC are both pretty good!).

One place that science and visual design intersect is the graphs and figures that go into scientific papers. The examples figures are from 2 review articles by the same research group, and present almost exactly the same information.  However, the one on the bottom is much more colorful, in fact it almost looks like it was cut out of construction paper.   Was it worth it the extra time and publishing money to make this figure colorful?  I think so.  It's much more inviting, and gets the reader more excited about the subject.  This is especially important for review articles. Most of the time, we approach a new scientific topic by reading a review--and when there are several reviews to choose from, the one that presents that the info in an exciting manner will get read!  This has practical implications for the author.  As my advisor said recently, one of the most effective ways of earning recognition for your work is to write review articles that reference the primary articles that you have published.  So if you can get people interested in the review, they will be led to the importance of your own research.

So now for the fun part of this post...a place to find some great graphs is xkcd.org.    This is a webcomic drawn with stick figures devoted to nerdy subjects such as science, math, and computing.  (Warning:  if you are nerdy like I am, this site can distract you for hours...)  XKCD alternates the comics with humorous but really informative graphics.  Here's a few examples:

http://xkcd.org/1040/ -- depth of lakes and oceans
http://xkcd.org/802/---  map of social interaction on the internet
http://xkcd.org/688/ OK, maybe this one is not so informative, but it reminded me of the data ink/non data ink section from Dr Brack's lecture...

The XKCD figures impress me partly because they pack a lot of information into a small space, but especially because they make ideas that I don't normally think about really interesting.  This is something I think we should strive for as scienctists!