💜 Being part of the session on accessibility in official statistics with so many good speakers including @statsgeekclare.bsky.social and @cararthompson.bsky.social

It's almost RSS Conference time! I'm excited to speaking in the accessibility in official statistics session organised by @statsgeekclare.bsky.social 📊 📅 Thu 4th Sept, 13:40 - 15:00 🎤 Also speaking: @cararthompson.bsky.social , Olivia Box Power, and Elliot Bridges #DataViz #Accessibility #RStats

On #VizBuzz tonight, I mentioned a couple of plots that I could never hope to replicate, the number 1 being @cararthompson.bsky.social's cake plot. Here it is in all its glory!! #databs #dataviz #gbbo www.linkedin.com/posts/carart...

That's a wrap for the #dataviz workshop I've been leading for the Nordic Society of Human Genetics and Precision Medicine's 2025 conference in Copenhagen. In the run up to the conference, I was sent a plot which it typical in the field (and published in one of the Nature journals). Here's my redo.

It's fantastic to see the #RLadies rotating curator programme back up and running! 💜 I really enjoyed curating when I did it 4 years ago, and I wrote a short blog post about it: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/curatin... I'd highly recommend giving it a go if you're thinking about it! 💜 #RStats

My annual reminder that @cararthompson.bsky.social monochromeR package is irreplaceable when you need to add a level of polish to your tables, charts or graphs

#ggplot folks - I'm updating my teaching materials to move to {marquee} where I can. How do we change font size on the fly in a geom_marquee()? I know we can change colours and bold/italics, etc, but how do we change size? I'm looking for the equivalent of this to add text hierarchy to annotations 👇

You've got a nice custom #ggplot2 theme, and you use it to make a map or any other graph with fixed coordinates, and the background does this... I've written up a blog post of the different solutions I explored, from the super hacky to the more elegant. www.cararthompson.com/posts/2025-0...

How do you make sense of large numbers, and create something that will draw people in, when these numbers aren't ones we like to dwell on? And how do you humanise those numbers to honour the people they represent? "Could you make a data-driven visual for my new song?" youtu.be/ccnIUL5Z3Y4

It's pretty wild what you can do with geom_text(), transparency, and some careful rescaling of superimposed images at different rates. Here's an extract from a video I'll post more about tomorrow. One of the most challenging projects I've had the privilege of working on.

A few weeks ago, a client asked me for advice on how to make use of his new colour palette within spaghetti plots. What seemed like a simple question morphed into a full blog post! www.cararthompson.com/posts/2025-0... Colour can be used to emphasise different stories - pick the approach you need!

This week in #rstats: - an R->Fortran transpiler from @t-kalinowski.bsky.social - @posit.co's Opportunity Scholarships - better spaghetti plots with @cararthompson.bsky.social - {httr2}s newest feature - learn {targets} with @rladies.org Philly #data #coding #news www.linkedin.com/pulse/week-r...

For today's project, I'm having to do a bit of copy-pasting of text from a PDF to add information to a quarto website. Which brings me back to one of my favourite #rstats tricks, and possibly my favourite function name! stringr::str_squish()

Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎄 🎵 Name the tune! All done with #rstats + #ggplot2 🤓 I finally got round to exploring using grid::linearGradient()! Here's the code: gist.github.com/cararthompso... P.S. There was some controversy in my family about the tune, but this version looked nicer 😊

Festive mode activated 🥳 This has been a brilliant year at Building Stories with Data. I'm so grateful for all the projects I've been able to work on, for the encouragement from my peers, for inspiring conferences and for reconnecting with everyone on here!

I use toggl to track the time I spend on projects - but don't always tracking things as much as I should (talk prep / pro bono work, etc.). Has anyone built a tool that automatically tracks how long they spend in #rstats projects? Feels like the stuff of the future, but someone will have done it...

"I loved your talk. Can we stay in touch and keep chatting dataviz?" "Actually, I'll be in Edinburgh soon. Let's do coffee!" Lovely to catch up with @hellopeiying.bsky.social today. Career & coding paths, & snow! If you're after creative explorations of important data stories, 👉 kontinentalist.com

"I really like the overall look, but I'm finding it hard to tell the difference between the turquoise and the green - is it possible to redo all the graphs with a different colour?" A happy reminder of the joy of setting up colours sensibly when creating dataviz with #rstats. Thank you past self!

This looks like a brilliant resource. Thanks for highlighting it!

The EU only with letters. 🅰️🅱️©️ 🇪🇺 #30DayMapChallenge Day 19 Typography #rstats #maps

I often talk about choosing colours for #dataviz with #accessibility in mind, but in yesterday's workshop, I was asked a question that came from a different starting point: "I'm colourblind. Are there any tools you can point me to that will help me know if colours look good together?"

I really enjoyed today's #dataviz workshop with The Data Lab - Innovation Centre. The recording is out already! I've uploaded it along with the slides and possibly the most comprehensive set of tool-agnostic resources I've compiled to date. www.cararthompson.com/talks/datala...

Last open workshop of the year for me: a tool-agnostic 45 min whistle-stop tour of ways to elevate your dataviz. The focus is on crafting better versions of "normal" visualisations, with lots of signposting to resources. Today 12.30 UK time. See you there! community.thedatalab.com/networks/eve...

Heading home from #cestlaviz with a head full of ideas and a heart encouraged by such a vibrant community asking important questions about the role of #dataviz, and doing so in style. Thank you for a brilliant conference!

Catching a flight for Amsterdam shortly, on my way to Utrecht for #cestlaviz! Wonder who I might bump into on my travels... See you there! 🥳

I ❤️ #ggplot. So much fun creating dataviz design system packages to do all the heavy-lifting. Creativity + accessibility + coding solutions that save teams a lot of time 🤓 Just added a few extra bells and whistles to this one, including exploring {marquee} for captions and CSS styling for tooltips.

Sometimes, you just need a quick chat with a friend who you trust to keep you & your code right and add a bit of humour into what turns out to have been more stressful than you realised. The #rstats community has always delivered on that front. Today, I'm grateful for @charliejhadley.bsky.social !

So good to see the data / dataviz crew reassemble here! I have missed this. Looking forward to seeing what we've all been up to. In the meantime, I've finally booked my tickets for C'EST LA VIZ. Who will I get to meet there in person? cest-la-viz.nl