Visions of Type
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If you live in a city, birds are essentially the only wildlife that you meet during your day.
Depending on where you live, you might come several species without even trying. In Vancouver, on a 10 minute walk around my house, I have a good chance to see rock doves (pigeons), crows, mallars, wigeons, hooded mergansers (if I'm lucky), common starlings, house sparrows (sigh), house finches, song sparrows, red-winged black birds, white-crowned sparrows, bushtits, black-capped chickadees, northern flickers, great blue herons, and the mother-of-all-honkers: Canada geese.
Birds and letters are everywhere—art of nature and man.
Letter forms, on the other hand, are the art that is also everywhere. Every typeface is an artistic expression.
Regardless where you live, sadly, you are likely to come across mutants like Comic Sans, Arial and Times New Roman — odious creatures from the shallows. Try to find Gotham, Gill Sans, Frutiger, or Garamond.
Bird songs can be visualized with a spectrogram — a visualization of the frequency components (vertical axis) in the call as a function of time (horizontal axis).
For example, below is a crop of a recording of the American goldfinch, who eats a potato chip in about 0.5 seconds. And when in flight, he has it with dip.
The full recording from the Cornell Lab Macaulay Library is shown below.
Spectrograms give us detailed insight into the fine structure of a vocalization. For example, the black-capped chicadee's “fee-bee” (or cheeseburger) actually has a very short pause (about 50 ms) in the “bee”, making it more of a “be-e”. Below is a recording of this call.
One of my favourite bird sounds is the “sawing machine” of the marsh wren. They often hide in tall reeds around ponds and lakes, making them hard to spot — by eye, but not by ear!
Mnemonics of bird songs help you remember the call and recognize the bird. It's so much easier to think "Quick, three beers!" — the call of the Olive-sided flycatcher — rather than "Chirp, chirp, chirp."
The mnemonic captures the cadence and repetition scheme of the song. For example, if you listen to the white-throated sparrow you can't help but think that this little guy is trying to tell us something.
French Zonotrichia albicollis: Baisse ta jupe, Philomène, Philomène, Philomène. How differently we hear!
—Madelaine Lemieux (via Twitter)
Potato chip!
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)
Here here. Come right here, dear.
Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)
Who cooks for you?
Barred Owl (Strix varia)
Here sweetie.
Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
Trees, trees, murmuring trees.
Black-throated Green Warbler (Setophaga virens)
Drink your tea.
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)
Are you awake? Me too.
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)
Qu'est-ce qu-il dit?
Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus)
Fire fire. Where where? Here here! See it, see it.
Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)
Clear. Wick, wick, wick.
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
Quick, three beers!
Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi)
Where are you? Here I am.
Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)
Chubby chubby cheeks. Chubby cheeks.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula)
See me, pretty, pretty me.
White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys)
Dear sweet Canada Canada Canada.
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)
If you love birds and typography, these posters are for you. The mnemonic for the bird's song is presented on a background that proportionally presents the bird's plumage colors.
Some posters create natural sets.
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And if you explore the posters, you just might find the bird too.
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Propensity score weighting
It is not certain that everything is uncertain. —Blaise Pascal
We have already explored how we can mitigate bias caused by confounding variables in observational studies using propensity score (PS) matching (PSM) and propensity score weighting (PSW). However, any statistical model is only as good as its assumptions and, if it is specified incorrectly, it can itself produce biased estimates of the treatment effect.
This month, we explore double robustness, a powerful statistical concept that provides a valuable “safety net” against the risk of an incorrect model. It offers two opportunities, instead of just one, to obtain a valid estimate of the treatment effect — making it possible to draw credible causal inferences from observational data without having to depend on a single set of modeling assumptions.
Kurz, C.F., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2026) Points of significance: Double Robustness. Nat. Methods 23:868–869.
Nature Biotechnology cover
My cover design on the 7 April 2026 Nature Biotechnology issue shows the dendrogram that represents a cluster of uniquely expressed (or downregulated) genes in human naive stem cells induced from such cells. Within each dendrogram block, the genomic barcode sequence (sampled from Supplementary Table 1) is depicted with a Code 39 barcode. The highlighted barcode is one of those used for cell isolation.
Ishiguro S. et al. A multi-kingdom genetic barcoding system for precise clone isolation (2026) Nature Biotechnology 44:616–629.
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
Happy 2026 π Day—
Art for the 5%
Celebrate π Day (March 14th) and enjoy the art — but only if you're part of the 5%.
Go ahead, see what you can't see.
Ishihara's Tests for Colour Deficiency
Authentic and accurate images of Ishihara's test plates photographed (and lovingly color-corrected) from the 38-plate Ishihara's Tests for Colour Deficiency.
I also provide the position, size, and color of each circle on each test plate.
Symmetric alternatives to the ordinary least squares regression
What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry? — William Blake, "The Tyger"
This month, we look at symmetric regression, which, unlike simple linear regression, it is reversible — remaining unaltered when the variables are swapped.
Simple linear regression can summarize the linear relationship between two variables `X` and `Y` — for example, when `Y` is considered the response (dependent) and `X` the predictor (independent) variable.
However, there are times when we are not interested (or able) to distinguish between dependent and independent variables — either because they have the same importance or the same role. This is where symmetric regression can help.
Luca Greco, George Luta, Martin Krzywinski & Naomi Altman (2025) Points of significance: Symmetric alternatives to the ordinary least squares regression. Nat. Methods 22:1610–1612.