Teller on Communicating Science

No, not Edward Teller, but Teller of the magic act Penn and Teller. The Smithsonian magazine’s March 2012 issue has an article written by Teller, available online. In the article, Teller explains seven principles for how magicians convince the audience of the trick. After reading them, I think many could be equally applied to convincing … read more

One of the most challenging (and satisfying) articles I’ve written

I recently coauthored a paper that has now been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Schultz, D. M., and G. Vaughan, 2011: Occluded fronts and the occlusion process: A fresh look at conventional wisdom. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 92, doi: 10.1175/2010BAMS3057.1. This paper is the first one I’ve written solely … read more

If a tree falls in the forest…

This month’s issue of the Annals of Improbable Research answers the question of whether a tree falling in the forest will make a sound if no one is around to hear it. The answer is yes (Melchior 2010). Moreover, the bigger the tree, the louder the sound. What I like about this article is that … read more

Another common mistake in least squares fitting

On p. 121 of Eloquent Science, I spend a page discussing the misuses of linear correlation. Turns out I didn’t cover all of them. Mark Hibberd writes: I think your Figure 11.10 [to the right] clearly shows a very common mistake of inappropriately using a standard least squares fit. The fit given (y = -13.2 … read more

A figure in need of help

I ran across this figure from an American Meteorological Society journal article recently. It’s just a simple scatterplot, which is so easy to construct, yet this figure has so many problems. 1. False alarm ratio and probability of detection are both quantities that can have values between 0 and 1, but the x axis ranges … read more

Appropriate way to label axes of graphs

Prof. Brian Fiedler of the University of Oklahoma recently published an article in Physics Education calling for a change in direction in teaching dimensionless ratios in physics. As he advocates, The tick marks [on an axis of a graph] are pure numbers. Labels with a solidus such as R/µm are orthodox notation for what the … read more

When to use north arrows on maps

This topic came up in an e-mail discussion with Jon Zeitler, Science and Operations Officer at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Austin, Texas. He advocated that maps should have horizontal length scales and north arrows on them. I agreed with him about the length scale, but felt that north arrows might be unnecessary … read more

Be creative in constructing your figures

With Adobe Illustrator and other similar graphics packages, scientists are more in control of their figures than ever before. You don’t have to rely on the default values and font types in your graphics software. One thing that you can do is create composite figures where two types of figures are combined to create a … read more

Why you should use sans serif fonts for figures, posters, and slides.

Serifs are those little vertical lines and flourishes at the ends of letters (like the vertical lines at the ends of the capital S or the horizontal line at the bottom of the lower-case r). Use sans serif fonts (Helvetica, Arial) because the near-uniform width of the strokes keeps the font readable when reduced in … read more