Blog

A blog about all things visualisation, data science, and open source software. Some of these blog posts can also be found on R-bloggers, and many have been featured in the R Weekly highlights.

How to choose an IDE

Thinking about switching to a different IDE? Instead of telling you which IDE to pick, this blog helps you ask the right questions to decide for yourself.

July 11, 2025

Build your own TARDIS with D3

If you’re interested in learning more about D3.js and understanding how to build custom charts with it (or if you just like Doctor Who!), then this blog is for you! It’s a step-by-step guide to creating an interactive TARDIS from scratch with D3.

June 2, 2025

A step-by-step chart makeover

As part of the 30 Day Chart Challenge in April 2025, I made a (deliberately) bad chart, which didn’t follow any data visualisation best practices. In this blog post, we’ll go step-by-step through the process of making it better.

May 22, 2025

30 Day Chart Challenge 2025

The 30 Day Chart Challenge is a data visualisation challenge where participants create a chart for each daily prompt. In this blog post, I’ll recap the charts I made during the 2025 challenge and discuss the data and tools I used, alongside what I learned during the process.

May 1, 2025

Observable for R users

Observable is a JavaScript-based programming framework for data exploration and visualisation, which is popular for creating interactive charts and dashboards. This blog post demonstrates why and how R users can integrate Observable into their existing R workflows.

April 1, 2025

Creating data-driven art

If you’ve ever wondered what data-driven art is, or why people make it, then reading this blog post should help to answer those questions. It also includes an example of data-driven art, which can be created in Python or R, and talks through the process of getting started with your own art.

March 11, 2025

Designing monochrome data visualisations

In data visualisations, colours are often used to show values or categories of data. However, sometimes you might not be able to or want to use colour. This blog post discusses some tips for designing better visualisations when you’re restricted to a monochrome palette.

February 5, 2025

Working with colours in R

Whether you’re building data visualisations or generative art, at some point you will likely need to consider which colours to use in R. This blog post describes different ways to define colours, how to make good choices about colour palettes, and ways to generate your own colour schemes.

January 10, 2025

Introducing the messy package

The messy R package takes a clean dataset, and randomly adds mess to create data more similar to that which you’d find in the real world. This is an easy way for educators to create data sets that give students the opportunity to practice their data wrangling skills without having to change all of their examples.

December 3, 2024

Getting comfortable talking about tech

A blog post about some of the things that have helped me in getting comfortable talking about tech (although hopefully some of the advice is also useful for non-tech talks!).

November 5, 2024

Parameterized plots and reports with R and Quarto

After running the ‘Parameterized plots and reports with R and Quarto’ workshop as part of the R/Pharma 2024 Conference, there were a few questions that we didn’t get the chance to answer. This blog post aims to answer some of them.

October 28, 2024

Getting started with generative art

There are many reasons why learning about generative art can be beneficial for data scientists. This blog post will explain what generative art is, where to find some inspiration, and how to start creating your own generative art systems.

October 1, 2024

Five ways to improve your chart axes

A poor choice of axes for your chart can make it more difficult to understand, and in some cases, suggest misleading conclusions. In this blog post, we’ll look at five ways to make better choices about your axes and stop relying on default settings.

September 3, 2024

Creating typewriter-styled images in R

This blog post explains the process of manipulating images using {imager} in R, processing pixel data, and using it to create a new version of an image that looks like it was printed with a typewriter!

August 1, 2024

Annotated area charts with plotnine

The plotnine visualisation library brings the Grammar of Graphics to Python. This blog post walks you through the process of creating a customised, annotated area chart of coal production data.

July 11, 2024

What’s new in {PrettyCols} 1.1.0?

{PrettyCols} is an R package containing aesthetically pleasing colour palettes that are compatible with {ggplot2}. Find out about new features and palettes contained in the latest release!

June 20, 2024

Coloured text in {ggplot2}: {ggtext} vs {marquee}

An alternative to a traditional legend is using coloured text in a subtitle. In {ggplot2}, we can do this using the {ggtext} package. You can also do it using the new {marquee} package. How do they compare?

June 4, 2024

Creating R tutorial worksheets (with and without solutions) using Quarto

Combining parameterised reporting with conditional content in Quarto, makes it easy to create multiple versions of R tutorial worksheets - a questions worksheet for students, and a solutions worksheet for students to take home.

May 31, 2024

Sketchy waffle charts in R

Waffle charts can be used to visualise counts or percentages of categorical data. This blog post describes a slightly unusual solution to creating sketchy looking waffle charts in R using the {sf} and {roughsf} packages.

April 29, 2024

A webR powered Shiny app for browsing TidyTuesday plots

Shinylive, GitHub Actions, and R - the magic combination to create an app that updates itself every week. This blog post gives a walk-through of scheduled data collection, building a Shiny app to display it, and deploying with Shinylive.

March 26, 2024

Answering some ‘Forecasting with GAMs in R’ questions

After running the ‘Forecasting with generalised additive models (GAMS) in R’ workshop with Forecasting for Social Good, there were a few questions that we didn’t get the chance to answer. This blog post aims to answer some of them.

February 26, 2024

Making Pretty PDFs with Typst (and Quarto)

With the latest 1.4 release of Quarto, it’s now possible to create PDF documents with Quarto using Typst. How does it compare to LaTeX, and is it actually easier to learn and use?

January 31, 2024

Four ways to streamline your R workflows

Finding ways to reduce manual tasks when programming, like copying and pasting files or code, can save you time and minimise the risk of errors. This blog post guides you through a few small changes to your R workflow to help reduce manual tasks and streamline your programming workflows in R.

December 31, 2023

Making art in Python with plotnine

A step-by-step guide to creating art in Python. This blog post covers creating random data, generating colour palettes, visualising with plotnine, and making artistic functions.

November 8, 2023

Answering some {tidymodels} questions

After running the ‘Introduction to machine learning with {tidymodels}’ workshop as part of the R/Pharma 2023 Conference, there were a few questions that we didn’t get the chance to answer. This blog post aims to answer some of them.

October 23, 2023

Creating typewriter-styled maps in {ggplot2}

Inspired by RJ Andrews, I created a typewriter-styled map of Scotland using {ggplot2} in R. This blog post explains the process of gathering elevation data, selecting a suitable typewriter font, and coding up a map!

September 30, 2023

Creating template files with R

If you find yourself regularly copying and pasting content between files, you can use R to do it for you! For repetitive tasks you can’t fully automate, using template files is a great way to save time and this blog post will show you how to make them in R.

August 22, 2023

Adding social media icons to charts with {ggplot2}

Adding social media icons to your data visualisation is a great, concise way to put your name on your work, and make it easy for people to find your profile from your work. This blog post explains how to add social media icons to {ggplot2} charts.

July 27, 2023

Learning Julia with #TidyTuesday and Tidier.jl

Tidier.jl is a Julia implementation of the {tidyverse}, and after 10 weeks of data wrangling and plotting #TidyTuesday data in Julia, I wanted to share what I’ve learnt about Julia as an R user.

June 1, 2023

Introducing {ggflowchart}

Flowcharts can be a useful way to visualise complex processes, and the new R package {ggflowchart} makes them easy to create in R. This blog post shows you how.

May 12, 2023

Creating a cracked egg plot using {ggplot2} in R

Inspired by a Visual Capitalist chart, this blog post will show you how to utilise spatial data R packages in a slightly unusual way to create an infographic in the shape of a cracked egg in R.

May 4, 2023

Detecting heart murmurs from time series data in R

Time series analysis can uncover hidden structures in data collected over time. In this blog post, I’ll use {tsfeatures} to extract time series features and {tidymodels} to predict which sound recordings of heartbeats contain heart murmurs, using those time series features.

April 14, 2023

Scraping London Marathon data with {rvest}

{rvest} is an R package within the {tidyverse} which helps you scrape data from web pages. This blog post will showcase an example of scraping data from Wikipedia on London Marathon races and winners.

March 16, 2023

Making Pretty PDFs with Quarto

Adding custom styling to documents makes them look more professional. This blog post will take you through the process of making a Quarto extension to create a reusable custom template for good-looking PDFs.

February 17, 2023

What’s new in {PrettyCols} 1.0.1?

{PrettyCols} is an R package containing aesthetically pleasing colour palettes that are compatible with {ggplot2}. Find out about new features and palettes contained in the latest release!

February 3, 2023

Seeing double? Building the same app in Shiny for R and Shiny for Python

Back in July 2022 at rstudio::conf(2022), Posit (formerly RStudio) announced the release of Shiny for Python. I wanted to see how the two compared - so I built the same Shiny app twice! This blog post highlights a few of the differences, and things that were a little tricky switching to Shiny for Python.

January 20, 2023

Combining R and Python with {reticulate} and Quarto

Sometimes you might need to use R. Sometimes you might need to use Python. Sometimes you need to use both at the same time. This blog post shows you how to combine R and Python code using {reticulate} and output the results using Quarto.

January 6, 2023

Another Year of #TidyTuesday

After another 52 data visualisations created for #TidyTuesday, it’s time for the annual round-up! Read this blog post for some interesting R packages discovered, a few new I’ve tricks learnt, and the data visualisations I’d like to do again.

December 27, 2022

R packages for visualising spatial data

Throughout the #30DayChartChallenge I made most of my maps with R. This blog post details the R packages I find myself using most often when visualising spatial data.

December 17, 2022

How to make your own #RStats Wrapped!

Forget about Spotify Wrapped and make your own #RStats Wrapped instead! This blog post will show you how to find your most used functions and make a graphic with {ggplot2}!

December 3, 2022

30 Day Map Challenge 2022

The #30DayMapChallenge is a month-long mapping, cartography, and data visualization challenge aimed at the spatial community. Here are the things I’ve learnt from participating in the challenge for a second time.

November 30, 2022

Using functional analysis to model air pollution data in R

Let’s say you need to understand how your data changes within a day, and between different days. Functional analysis is one approach of doing just that so here’s how I applied functional analysis to some air pollution data using R!

November 14, 2022

Automatically deploying a Shiny app for browsing #RStats tweets with GitHub Actions

This tutorial blog will show you how to use GitHub actions to automatically update a data source and re-deploy a Shiny app, with an example Shiny application which uses {rtweet} to browse R-related tweets.

October 3, 2022

Introducing {PrettyCols}

An introduction to {PrettyCols} - a new R package containing aesthetically pleasing colour palettes that are compatible with {ggplot2}.

September 2, 2022

Designing #TidyTuesday visualisations for mobile (with Quarto)

If, like me, you mostly scroll through Twitter on your phone, you might want to consider designing your content specifically aimed at people who look at Twitter on their phone. Here’s how to do it in R, with a little help from Quarto.

August 16, 2022

Mapping a marathon with {rStrava}

This tutorial blog will walk through the process of getting data from Strava using {rStrava}, making a map of it, and animating the map with {gganimate}.

July 18, 2022

Creating flowcharts with {ggplot2}

Flowcharts can be a useful way to visualise complex processes. This tutorial blog will explain how to create one using {igraph} and {ggplot2}.

June 6, 2022

30 Day Chart Challenge 2022

The #30DayChartChallenge is a data visualisation challenge where participants create a chart for each daily prompt.

May 7, 2022

Getting started with {gt} tables

{gt} is an R package designed to make it easy to make good looking tables. This blog post demonstrates how to add plots as a column in a {gt} table.

April 21, 2022

Best (artistic) practices in R

Generative art is the process of creating artwork through a set of pre-determined rules often with an element of randomness. This blog post will outline the best practices I follow when creating generative art in R.

March 3, 2022

A Story of Statistical Writing and Life Expectancy

Last year I was a finalist in the 2021 Statistical Excellence Award for Early-Career Writing. This blog post introduces my article published in Significance and gives some tips for statistical writing.

February 4, 2022

Curating for @WeAreRLadies

An overview of my experience of curating the @WeAreRLadies twitter feed.

January 18, 2022

A Year of #TidyTuesday

One of my goals for 2021 was to participate in the #TidyTuesday challenge on a regular basis. This blog post reflects on the past year of data visualisations.

December 29, 2021

Thinking about #TidyTuesday (and the Spice Girls)

Earlier this week, whilst curating for @WeAreRLadies, I tweeted a thread on my thought process for this week’s #TidyTuesday challenge. This blog post expands on the thoughts in that thread.

December 18, 2021

30 Day Map Challenge 2021

The #30DayMapChallenge is a daily mapping, cartography, and data visualization challenge aimed at the spatial community.

December 1, 2021

Detecting demand outliers in transport systems

An overview of my PhD thesis entitled Detecting demand outliers in transport systems.

October 6, 2021

CottonViz Data Visualisation Challenge

In June, the #CottonViz data visualisation challenge was run by the History of Statistics & Young Statisticians sections of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS).

June 30, 2021
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