Nature Methods: Points of View
The first Points of View column was about color coding in the July 2010 issue of Nature Methods. In its 5 year history, the column has established a significant legacy— it is one of the most frequently accessed parts of Nature Methods. The community sees the value in clear and effective visual communication and acknowledges the need for a forum in which best practices in the field are presented practically and accessibly.
2010–2012
Bang Wong, in collaboration with visiting authors (Noam Shoresh, Nils Gehlenborg, Cydney Nielsen and Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard), has penned 29 columns in the period of August 2010 to December 2012, covering broad topics such as salience, Gestalt principles, color, typography, negative space, layout, and data integration.
2012–2014
The announcement of the return of the column, together with its history and a description of me, the new author, are available at the Nature Methods methagora blog. Humor is kept by repeated reference to my now-dead-but-once-famous pet rat.
When it was A.C. Greyling's turn to speak at a debate in which Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins already made their points, Greyling said
When one gets up to speak this late in a debate, one is a bit tempated to quote that Hungarian M.P. who after a long, long, long discussion in the parliament in Budapest stood up and said, "Everything has been said but not everybody said it yet." (watch on YouTube)
Indeed, this is quite how I feel after being offered to be the new author of Nature Methods Point of View column. Both Bang and Hitchens provide significant inspiration for me, so Greyling's words are particularly fitting.
To improve on the column is impossible. My challenge is to identify useful topics that have not yet been covered. I will be working closely with Nature Methods and Bang to ensure that the columns strike the right balance of topic, tone and timbre.
In 2013 the Points of View column spawned the Points of Significance column, which deals with statistics in biological science.
For the month of August 2013, the entire set of 35 columns is available for free.
2015 and beyond
The column continues to run, though no longer monthly.
A PDF eBook of the 38 Points of View articles published between August 2010 and February 2015 is now available at the Nature Shop for $7.99 under the title Visual strategies for biological data: the collected Points of View.
Propensity score weighting
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. —Mr. Spock (Star Trek II)
This month, we explore a related and powerful technique to address bias: propensity score weighting (PSW), which applies weights to each subject instead of matching (or discarding) them.
Kurz, C.F., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2025) Points of significance: Propensity score weighting. Nat. Methods 22:1–3.
Happy 2025 π Day—
TTCAGT: a sequence of digits
Celebrate π Day (March 14th) and sequence digits like its 1999. Let's call some peaks.
Crafting 10 Years of Statistics Explanations: Points of Significance
I don’t have good luck in the match points. —Rafael Nadal, Spanish tennis player
Points of Significance is an ongoing series of short articles about statistics in Nature Methods that started in 2013. Its aim is to provide clear explanations of essential concepts in statistics for a nonspecialist audience. The articles favor heuristic explanations and make extensive use of simulated examples and graphical explanations, while maintaining mathematical rigor.
Topics range from basic, but often misunderstood, such as uncertainty and P-values, to relatively advanced, but often neglected, such as the error-in-variables problem and the curse of dimensionality. More recent articles have focused on timely topics such as modeling of epidemics, machine learning, and neural networks.
In this article, we discuss the evolution of topics and details behind some of the story arcs, our approach to crafting statistical explanations and narratives, and our use of figures and numerical simulations as props for building understanding.
Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2025) Crafting 10 Years of Statistics Explanations: Points of Significance. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application 12:69–87.
Propensity score matching
I don’t have good luck in the match points. —Rafael Nadal, Spanish tennis player
In many experimental designs, we need to keep in mind the possibility of confounding variables, which may give rise to bias in the estimate of the treatment effect.
If the control and experimental groups aren't matched (or, roughly, similar enough), this bias can arise.
Sometimes this can be dealt with by randomizing, which on average can balance this effect out. When randomization is not possible, propensity score matching is an excellent strategy to match control and experimental groups.
Kurz, C.F., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2024) Points of significance: Propensity score matching. Nat. Methods 21:1770–1772.