Errol Lloyd

Data visualisation (#dataviz) has become such a focus for researchers and data scientists alike that it is now a full-time profession. But it is just one of the many otherwise full-time skills we researchers need to wield. So is dataViz of special importance to researchers? Why? And if so, what does ResBaz have to do with it?

A glance back in time to one of the watershed moments of science is … ahem … illustrative.

The DNA Problem

When the structure of DNA was discovered, there was still debate about whether the molecule was the true bearer of inheritance and genes. The power of figuring out the molecular structure of DNA can be seen in the fact that, once proposed, as Watson and Crick pointed out in their landmark paper, their proposed molecular structure immediately suggested how reproduction, cell-division and inheritance could all work at the molecular level. Now, with this fusion of chemistry and biology, the molecular knowledge and technology around DNA has revolutionised biomedical science and research.

But how did Watson and Crick make their Nobel Prize winning discovery?

Well, it may surprise you.

Watson & Crick’s approach

First, they didn’t collect any data or work in a lab. They used other people’s data (some of which, infamously, came from Rosalind Franklin’s work).

The raw x-ray data on the structure of DNA (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ABDNAxrgpj.jpg)

Second, they, by their own admission, did not have sufficient data to prove their proposed structure for DNA. It was a theory, and it was other people’s work and data that subsequently ’proved’ its correctness.

Third, and most importantly, their main research tool was data visualisation and cardboard. Somewhat unconventionally for the time, their approach was to collect the pre-existing data, which alone did not suggest a structure, and put together what was known in the form of physical, real-life, models of how the atoms connected to each other. That’s where the cardboard came in. The challenge for them was to go from what was already known to the complete structure of DNA. Their approach? According to Watson, to play around with the model looking for something pretty. Seriously. And once they struck upon the now famous double-helix, with its nucleotide pairs, in a model that looked stable, they sent off a one-page paper to Nature detailing their unproven model and scooped a Nobel Prize.

Replica of Watson and Crick’s physical model (https://www.flickr.com/photos/stewdean/18717400).

What, really?

Now none of this is to trivialise or ridicule Watson and Crick’s success, nor touch on its potential controversy.

Determining a molecular structure from incomplete data is necessarily a tricky business. Change one angle between two atoms and it can ripple through the whole structure as each atom and its bonds try to be as stable as they can. But there is a general structure or pattern, the double-helix in the case of DNA, that can allow all of the atoms and bonds to come together in a collectively stable arrangement.

What Watson and Crick did was find the structure in the complexity, the pattern in the chaos.

What’s significant is that they did it by visualising the data in such a way that they could not only ‘see’ it, but explore it.

They used the power of the eye and the visual brain to quickly absorb information and characterise structure. A power created through evolution, encoded in our very DNA, ironically enough, to deal with the complex realities of daily animal life. And it was this that allowed them to ‘see’ the structure come out of the data - to see the forest for the trees.

Born out of the necessity of dealing with a large and complex system and data, Watson and Crick’s success is essentially a remarkable story of research by dataviz.

DataViz in the DNA of Research

Watson and Crick using the same model they used to discover DNA’s structure to also communicate it.

In research, the truth is often simple or elegant. But it more than often hides amidst impenetrable interactions and confounding complexities. This search or hunt of ours requires tools and weapons. What Watson and Crick’s story highlights for us is that chief amongst our weapons is our eye.

Whether it is to understand our own data, or to communicate that understanding to others, to understand something in research is to ‘see’ it.

And therein lies the trick - making your work visual.

DataViz in the Code of Research

Watson and Crick had a way to make their data and research question visual - their physical model. The more we can find a way to do the same in our projects, the more we’ll understand our data and systems and the more we’ll be able to communicate this to our colleagues.

But how?

Well … code … the research superpower ResBaz seeks to share. Coding gives you superpowers over numbers, text and data.

But it also gives you the more mystical and magical ability to make data and ideas visual. Indeed, this is perhaps the greatest boon coding has to offer researchers — a mastery over data that empowers both our research and our communication.

If you want to stich your data together with a specific and beautiful visual manifestation, programming with one of many available libraries is the best tool. This is especially the case if you want to be able to explore data interactively.

Indeed, if you haven’t come to ResBaz and coding for the data analysis, you’ll definitely want to come for the data visualisation!

We’ve run meet-ups on how to code dataviz for python and matlab, and an event on dataviz craft, not to mention the many workshops we run on getting code into researchers’ fingers.

So please, attend one of ResBaz’s workshops on either Python, Matlab, R, or making web pages to open yourself to nearly innumerable visualisation tools, and hopefully you’ll also empower your research.

References

Watson, J. D. & Crick, F. H. C. Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature 171, 737-738 (1953) doi:10.1038/171737a0 (https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/Molecular-Structure-of-Nucleic-Acids-16331)

Watson, James D., Double helix; a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, New York, Atheneum, 1968 (http://www.worldcat.org/title/double-helix-a-personal-account-of-the-discovery-of-the-structure-of-dna/oclc/439345)