Ongoing projects

Past projects

Exoplanets!

As a first year graduate student, I took a class on something called data visualization. Basically this amounts to practicing different ways of plotting my work and finding the most effective combination of colors, spacing, and timing (in the case of animations) that best communicate the message of each plot. Regarding color, I especially liked the attention we paid to finding ways to make a graphic or plot color-blind friendly. This was something I hadn't thought much of before, but it is important because it will allow more people, whether they be an audience member at a talk or someone reading a paper, to understand what's being shown to them. I like this example showing what different things look like to people with different color blindnesses.

I learned too many new techniques and tools to show them all here, but I can share this video assignment I made for the class.  It uses data taken from Exoplanets.org and this software called Glue being developed by Alyssa Goodman, the professor who taught this class, and a few graduate students. The video is intended to show how Glue can help answer some yet unanswered questions about exoplanets and their host stars.

Also, I should mention that I rehearsed that video way too many times as is evidenced by my laptop battery dying in the final moments of the narration. Needless to say, I was happy enough with the final video and I found Glue to be an amazing piece of software for data visualization.