Publications

Automated Residual Plot Assessment With the R Package autovi and the Shiny Application autovi.web

Visual assessment of residual plots is a common approach for diagnosing linear models, but it relies on manual evaluation, which does not scale well and can lead to…

Weihao Li, Dianne Cook, Emi Tanaka, Susan Vanderplas, Klaus Ackermann

A Guide to Designing Experiments to Test Statistical Graphics

In this paper, we discuss considerations and methods for experimentally testing visualizations. We discuss levels of user engagement with graphics, common issues when…

Emily Robinson, Heike Hofmann, Susan Vanderplas

Can You See The Change? Visual Perception in Change Point Analysis

Detecting change points is crucial in analyzing time series data and single-subject designs. This study investigates factors influencing change point detection through…

Miguel Antonio Fudolig, Emily A. Robinson, Susan Vanderplas

Perception and Cognitive Implications of Logarithmic Scales for Exponentially Increasing Data: Perceptual Sensitivity Tested with Statistical Lineups

[1] E. A. Robinson, R. Howard, and S. Vanderplas. “Perception and Cognitive Implications of Logarithmic Scales for Exponentially Increasing Data: Perceptual Sensitivity…

Emily A. Robinson, Reka Howard, Susan Vanderplas

Methodological problems in every black-box study of forensic firearm comparisons

[1] M. Cuellar, S. Vanderplas, A. Luby, et al. “Methodological problems in every black-box study of forensic firearm comparisons”. In: Law, Probability and Risk 23.1…

Maria Cuellar, Susan Vanderplas, Amanda Luby, Michael Rosenblum

Incorrect statistical reasoning in Guyll et al. leads to biased claims about strength of forensic evidence

[1] M. Rosenblum, E. T. Chin, E. L. Ogburn, et al. “Incorrect statistical reasoning in Guyll et al. leads to biased claims about strength of forensic evidence”. In: Proceedin…

Michael Rosenblum, Elizabeth T. Chin, Elizabeth L. Ogburn, Akihiko Nishimura, Daniel Westreich, Abhirup Datta, Susan Vanderplas, Maria Cuellar, William C. Thompson

Escaping Flatland: Graphics, Dimensionality, andHuman Perception

Almost 40~years ago, Cleveland and McGill published the first of 3 papers detailing experiments assessing the accuracy of numerical perception using different types of…

Susan Vanderplas, Erin Blankenship, Tyler Wiederich

Hidden Multiple Comparisons Increase Forensic Error Rates

When wires are cut, the tool produces striations on the cut surface; as in other forms of forensic analysis, these striation marks are used to connect the evidence to the…

Susan Vanderplas, Alicia Carriquiry, Heike Hofmann

A Plot Is Worth a Thousand Tests: Assessing Residual Diagnostics with the Lineup Protocol

Regression experts consistently recommend plotting residuals for model diagnosis, despite the availability of many numerical hypothesis test procedures designed to use…

Weihao Li, Dianne Cook, Emi Tanaka, Susan VanderPlas

Demonstrative Evidence and the Use of Algorithms in Jury Trials

We investigate how the use of bullet comparison algorithms and demonstrative evidence may affect juror perceptions of reliability, credibility, and understanding of expert…

Rachel Rogers, Susan VanderPlas

Evaluating Perceptual Judgements on 3D Printed Bar Charts

Graphical design principles typically recommend minimizing the dimensionality of a visualization - for instance, using only 2 dimensions for bar charts rather than providing…

Tyler Wiederich, Susan Vanderplas

One Model That Fits Them All: Psychometrics With Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Models

User experiments are essential for informing researchers what an audience is seeing in a chart. User experiments are generally quite expensive in monetary value and in the…

Wangqian Ju, Susan VanderPlas, Heike Hofmann

Misuse of statistical method results in highly biased interpretation of forensic evidence in Guyll et al. 2023

[1] M. Rosenblum, E. T. Chin, E. L. Ogburn, et al. “Misuse of statistical method results in highly biased interpretation of forensic evidence in Guyll et al. (2023)”. In: Law…

Michael Rosenblum, Elizabeth T Chin, Elizabeth L Ogburn, Akihiko Nishimura, Daniel Westreich, Abhirup Datta, Susan Vanderplas, Maria Cuellar, William C Thompson

Eye Fitting Straight Lines in the Modern Era

How do statistical regression results compare to intuitive, visually fitted results? Fitting lines by eye through a set of points has been explored since the 20th century.…

Emily A. Robinson, Reka Howard, Susan VanderPlas

Penguins Go Parallel: a grammar of graphics framework for generalized parallel coordinate plots

Parallel Coordinate Plots (PCP) are a valuable tool for exploratory data analysis of high-dimensional numerical data. The use of PCPs is limited when working with…

Susan VanderPlas, Yawei Ge, Antony Unwin, Heike Hofmann

A Study in Reproducibility: The Congruent Matching Cells Algorithm and `cmcR` package

[1] J. Zemmels, S. Vanderplas, and H. Hofmann. “A Study in Reproducibility: The Congruent Matching Cells Algorithm and cmcR package”. In: R Journal (4 Feb. 09, 2023)…

Joseph Zemmels, Susan Vanderplas, Heike Hofmann

You Draw It: Implementation of visually fitted trends with r2d3

[1] E. Robinson, R. Howard, and S. VanderPlas. “You Draw It: Implementation of visually fitted trends with r2d3”. In: Journal of Data Science 21 (2 Jan. 12, 2023)…

Emily Robinson, Reka Howard, Susan VanderPlas

Exploring Rural Shrink Smart Through Guided Discovery Dashboards

[1] D. Bradford and S. VanderPlas. “Exploring Rural Shrink Smart Through Guided Discovery Dashboards”. In: Journal of Data Science (Dec. 2022), pp. 1-12. ISSN: 1680-743X.…

Denise Bradford, Susan VanderPlas

Visual Narratives of the Covid-19 pandemic

[1] A. Wilhelm and S. VanderPlas. “Visual Narratives of the Covid-19 pandemic”. In: Journal of Data Science, Statistics, and Visualisation 2.7 (Nov. 01, 2022), pp. 84-113.…

Adalbert Wilhelm, Susan VanderPlas

An introduction to firearms examination for researchers in statistics

In the United States, where firearms are readily accessible, the annual number of gun-related crimes is in the hundreds of thousands, and about two thirds of all murders are…

Susan Vanderplas, Alicia Carriquiry, Heike Hofmann, James Hamby, Xiao Hui Tai

Statistical significance calculations for scenarios in visual inference

Statistical inference provides the protocols for conducting rigorous science, but data plots provide the opportunity to discover the unexpected. These disparate endeavours…

Susan Vanderplas, Christian Röttger, Dianne Cook, Heike Hofmann

Designing Graphics Requires Useful Experimental Testing Frameworks and Graphics Derived From Empirical Results

Hullman and Gelman (2021, this issue) have provided a very thorough discussion of the premise that interactive exploratory data analysis requires a theoretical framework for…

Susan VanderPlas

Treatment of inconclusives in the AFTE range of conclusions

In the past decade, and in response to the recommendations set forth by the National Research Council Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community…

Heike Hofmann, Alicia Carriquiry, Susan Vanderplas

Testing Statistical Charts: What Makes a Good Graph?

It has been approximately 100 years since the very first formal experimental evaluations of statistical charts were conducted. In that time, technological changes have…

Susan Vanderplas, Dianne Cook, Heike Hofmann

Comparison of three similarity scores for bullet LEA matching

Recent advances in microscopy have made it possible to collect 3D topographic data, enabling more precise virtual comparisons based on the collected 3D data as a supplement…

Susan Vanderplas, Melissa Nally, Tylor Klep, Cristina Cadevall, Heike Hofmann

`ggenealogy`: An R Package for Visualizing Genealogical Data

This paper introduces ggenealogy (Rutter, Vanderplas, and Cook 2019), a developing R software package that provides tools for searching through genealogical data, generating…

Lindsay Rutter, Susan Vanderplas, Dianne Cook, Michelle Graham

Machine learning in forensic applications

The 2009 National Academy of Sciences report found pattern-evidence disciplines to be rife with subjectivity. In the decade since, machine learning methods have been…

Alicia Carriquiry, Heike Hofmann, Xiao Hui Tai, Susan Vanderplas

Framed! Reproducing and Revisiting 150-Year-Old Charts

AbstractThe Statistical Atlases published by the Census Bureau in the late 1800s utilized a number of novel methods for displaying data. In this paper, we examine the use of…

Susan Vanderplas, Ryan C Goluch, Heike Hofmann

Extending `ggplot2` for Linked and Animated Web Graphics

Interactive web graphics are great for communication and knowledge sharing, but are difficult to leverage during the exploratory phase of a data science workflow. Even…

Carson Sievert, Susan Vanderplas, Jun Cai, Kevin Ferris, Faizan Uddin Fahad Khan, Toby Dylan Hocking

All of This Has Happened Before. All of This Will Happen Again: Data Science

David Donoho’s “50 Years of Data Science” provides a valuable perspective on the statistics-vs-data science debate that has been raging in academic statistics departments…

Heike Hofmann, Susan Vanderplas

Clusters Beat Trend!? Testing Feature Hierarchy in Statistical Graphics

Graphics are very effective for communicating numerical information quickly and efficiently, but many of the design choices we make are based on subjective measures, such as…

Susan Vanderplas, Heike Hofmann

Spatial Reasoning and Data Displays

Graphics convey numerical information very efficiently, but rely on a different set of mental processes than tabular displays. Here, we present a study relating demographic…

Susan VanderPlas, Heike Hofmann

Signs of the Sine Illusion - why we need to care

Graphical representations have to be true to the data they display. Computational tools ensure this on a technical level. But we also need to take “flaws” of the human…

Susan Vanderplas, Heike Hofmann

In tennis, do smashes win matches?

It is summer, and Wimbledon and the French and US Opens are with us. In tennis, does the man with the fastest serve win? And can you make too few unforced errors for…

Sarah Budrus, Susan Vanderplas, Dianne Cook

Detection of gene orthology from gene co-expression and protein interaction networks

[1] F. Towfic, S. Vanderplas, C. A. Oliver, et al. “Detection of gene orthology from gene co-expression and protein interaction networks”. In: BMC bioinformatics 11.Suppl 3…

Fadi Towfic, Susan Vanderplas, Casey A Oliver, Oliver Couture, Christopher K Tuggle, M Heather West Greenlee, Vasant Honavar

Near-infrared spectroscopy and cortical responses to speech production

This research demonstrates near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a flexible methodology for measuring cortical activity during overt speech production while avoiding some…

Rachel Hull, Heather Bortfeld, Susan Koons