The Eyes Have It

FDA drug approvals at 19-year low

From a recent article on the Daily Review:

"Decrease in filings becomes trend, agency reports"

"Pharmaceutical companies may be bringing their applications to the FDA more slowly because they have seen the agency turn back so many products for additional testing, said Ira Loss, an analyst with Washington Analysis."

[via coreynahman.com.]

Keynote Crashes

From a recent CNET article:

"Apple Computer created its new Keynote software to let its boss, Steve Jobs, make it through speeches without a hitch. But now that the company has released the presentation program to the public, early customers say it is anything but bug-free."

"There are complaints of a host of problems, the most severe of which being that the software is prone to crashes that can take down an entire operating system--something intended to be a rare occurrence in Mac OS X. "

"I've never had any OS 10 app crash the whole system before," reads a posting from "Yikesboy."

Pain Made Visible: Migraine Masterpieces

Winning entries in a contest sponsored by the National Headache Foundation.

"The contest themed, 'Images of Migraine,' was open to professional and amateur artists who are diagnosed migraine sufferers. The work was to depict their world when dealing with a migraine. The contest was developed to publicize the diminished quality of life migraine headache sufferers experience due to pain and associated symptoms."

Many of these are really wonderful, if that word can be used to describe such graphic representations of an excruciating experience. I've always favored pictorial art that has text in it, so I especially like Pain and Relief by Tiffany Slaybaugh, You Don't Know the Half of It by Chris Ehman and the untitled piece by Kyle Olmon. Being an extreme Joseph Cornell enthusiast, I also liked The Storm Cloud Descends by Barbara Yawit. I only wish the enlarged versions of these works were large enough to see details and read all the text passages.

[via Dublog]

A sauna in a Saab

In Why PowerPoint is like a sauna in a Saab, Derek K. Miller reminds us that it's the presentation, not the software, that's important.

Also explains how he recently gave a talk with slides created using HTML and shown in IE:

"Here's how I've recently avoided Microsoft dependency: I gave a 90-minute presentation last night, but I made up all 21 of my slides in HTML using the BBEdit text editor and a graphics program. Never mind fancy transitions and animation effects -- I made the slides under Mac OS X (testing using Safari) and displayed 'em on a Windows XP laptop (using Internet Explorer) a few hours later."

"I could have fit two or three of the slide sets on a floppy disk, though I used a USB card reader to move them instead. And I posted them on my Web site as a backup, so I could have done the presentation from any Net-connected computer. The slides on this site are exactly what I used for my talk, not some converted version from PowerPoint or anything else. I spoke from notes printed on paper. Oh, and I popped over to use the basic WordPad word processor occasionally mid-talk, to type down notes and suggestions from the audience on the screen as we went along (which I could then save for later follow-up)."

This technique overcomes one of the reasons PowerPoint has all the power and why nobody wants to switch to anything else. COMPATIBILITY -- everyone has it and you know if you send a PPT presentation to someone, odds are, it they are in the corporate world, they will be able to edit and view it.

Using IE as presentation software means even more people will be able to view the presentation (more people have a browser on their machines than PPT) and everyone has a text editor so everyone has the potential for making changes. However, there aren't nearly as many people who could get in and actually code the HTML necessary to create and edit slides.

I wonder if he considered adding CSS to the mix.

What if you abandoned the slide, next slide model that PPT has the world locked into and developed a presentation delivery style that was based on scrolling through content instead.

I also really like the idea of tiny files and the fact you can show the presentation from any computer, anywhere as long as it has an internet connection.

Considering most of the presentations I create tend to be for academic audiences or regulatory agencies (in other words, very plain Jane), HTML would give me most if not all the feature I use in PPT.

If time allows, I think I might try converting a classic PPT presentation to an single HTML file and play with the scrolling possibilities.

Rare Text Images from the Clendening Library

"This exhibit displays hundreds of images from medical and natural history texts, most of which were printed before 1800. They are organized by theme: diagnostics, human body, imaging, instruments, physician-patient culture, portraits, public health, reproduction, reproduction instruments, therapeutics. The Clendening Library encourages educational use of the images at no charge. If you wish to use images for publication or commercial purposes, higher quality (300 dpi tiff) images are available for a nominal fee by contacting the Clendening Library."

Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

Excellent companion site to New York Public Library exhibit that took place a couple of years ago. Examines color in graphic reproduction as well as the four common book illustration techniques: relief printing, intaglio printing, planographic printing and photography. Includes detail studies that allow you to click on an area in an image to view in greater detail. I especially liked the details of the world's only hand-colored edition of Vesalius' De humani Corporis Fabrica Libri.

"Illustrations were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas and it was often the case that new developments in the sciences were accompanied by corresponding developments in illustrative techniques. These techniques are the subject of Seeing Is Believing, which complements an exhibition of the same name on view from October 23, 1999-February 19, 2000 at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library."

"Scientific and medical illustration is often characterized by a twofold need: for accuracy and for clarity in presenting information. It would be more appropriate, however, to say that such illustration is utilized in assisting the reader in "seeing" information within the context of a particular theory or scientific reality."

[Thanks to David Williams of Portage (another excellent site) for the link.]

The History of Visualisation

Another thought provoking piece by Juan C. Dürsteler at Inf@Vis!

"The history of visualisation is that of the search for new artefacts to amplify the ability to know; it’s the history of writing and of maps, the history of knowledge."

"In the end, the history of visualisation is the history of the tools that the human beings use to amplify their cognition. We take it for granted that human beings use tools (we call them technology) to extend our physical capacities. But maybe it’s not so obvious that we are probably the only kind of animal that builds tools to amplify our thinking."

The Anatomical Waxes by Clemente Susini of the University of Cagliari

From the Preface: "Susini's anatomical waxes are wonderful works. The harmony and beauty of the shapes reproduced with unrivalled technical perfection, the classical composure of the expression, the refined matching of the colours balanced with skilled moderation, removed what is macabre in preparation from corpses whilst leaving all the anatomical truth; reality is transfigured by the great Artist and the anatomical models rises to the dignity of a work of art."

Scientific Visualization and Information Architecture

Lecture notes provided by Prof. John P. Boyd of University of Michigan for students taking "ENG 503: Scientific Visualization and Information Architecture" In PDF.

Chapters include "How to Graph Badly", "The Gospel According to Tufte", "Axis Magic", "Contour Plots", "Mesh Plots", "Vector or Arrow Plots", "Drawing", "Fonts", "Scanning", "Halftones", "Lighting", "Color Models", "Image Processing and Photoshop", "Animation and Video", "Scientific GUIs", "Fine Arts", "Archetypes and Lineages" and "Three-Dimensional Graphics".

Also includes a comprehensive glossary and a fairly exhaustive bibliography. Professor Boyd is obviously in possession of a heavy-duty math intellect, but he still manages to convey how important the creative aspects of graphic design are to data visualization.

"It Has Little Feet": Explaining Graphic Design

Came across a quote worth sharing and worth keeping in mind during every client interaction. It's from Make It Bigger by Paula Scher, a partner in the design firm Pentagram :

"Shortly after I joined Pentagram I saw a presentation by my partner Michael Bierut that explained the typographic system for a corporate packaging project for a large technology firm. Bierut had pasted a black-and-white printout of the typeface Times Roman to a piece of foamcore, and over the alphabet slugged the headline: "This is Times Roman. It is a serif typeface. It has little feet." I picked up the board and laughed. Then I realized it wasn't funny. In that instant I understood what I had been doing wrong in client situations for more than twenty years. I had assumed that clients had come to me having the background to make value judgments about what they were looking at. When they picked inferior design, I assumed it was because they were philistines bent on keeping down the American taste level. From Bierut I learned that clients were "just normal people," and that normal people have a reasonable understanding of things based on their cultural environment—and are often directly influenced by some very specific milieu in which they operate. I was the one who was not normal. I had a graphic designer's understanding of things. "Most people don't understand what a graphic designer does, let alone what they see," Bierut explained. I had to learn to explain design in lay terms, in human terms. "Little feet" demystifies serif type. It explains a visual difference.

"The ability to explain graphic design is fundamentally different from the ability to create graphic design, and it relies on different faculties. In the explanation process, the designer must deconstruct his or her work and place it in a logical sequence so one can understand its components and see how they collectively create an entity that has a specific idea, spirit, and look. The act of designing is more ephemeral; it is an intuitive process informed by external forces that direct the intuition. Whereas a solution can be explained, the process that created it can never adequately be understood. That's why the process is so mistrusted, misunderstood, even resented. It is not scientific or democratic, cannot be learned by following an appropriate course of study, and cannot even be equally understood or appreciated by people of similar intellects and levels of education.

"Whereas the act of explaining design requires specific order and logic, the act of creating design involves a form of disorder, with outer stimuli thrown together into the mixer of the human brain. The result is something that is various parts intellect, inspiration, and obsession. Too much intellect smothers obsession, too much obsession smothers intellect, and too much of either smothers inspiration."

I think it's safe to say the second and third paragraphs can be applied to just about any creative activity.

[via curiousLee]

The Art and Science of Biostatistical Display

This useful paper by Dominic T. Moore of Duke Clinical Research Institute collects and summarizes a bunch of data visualization ideas, guidelines and general rules of thumb. Looks like it was delivered as part of a SAS user's group meeting.

"This paper will provide practical guidelines for the data analyst who is looking to communicate data analysis results by means of presentation graphics. This is not about exploratory data analysis, the interaction of the data analyst and the computer, but the art and science of visual communication. The author asserts with only a hint of exaggeration, that he puts forth not one original idea, but rather restates the major principles by the who’s who of graphs and data visualization, (Cleveland, Playfair, ,Tufte, Tukey, Wainer, Young). The goal is to give guidelines so that one can strive for excellence in graphics whose principles come from graphic design in art and science."

And Back Again

All of the projects have come to completion and I'm hoping to begin publishing on a more regular schedule again.

The biggest obstacle to keeping TEHI going (in case you were wondering) was being on the Merck team that went before an FDA advisory committee yesterday. We were down in an unexpectedly snowy Sliver Springs, Maryland to present data from the LIFE study in support of a new indication for COZAAR (losartan). Luckily for everyone involved, I wasn't one of the speakers.

It's kind of interesting to see the reporters in the meeting room leaning over laptops, writing in real time as deliberations progress, stories that I know will be filed and online long before I'll be home. Thing have changed a bit since the semester I spent as a journalism major 20 years ago.