R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 1: Cédric Scherer and Georgios Karamanis

In this first episode of the R for the Rest of Us podcast, I speak with designers Cédric Scherer and Georgios Karamanis about how they learned data viz, why they use R for their work, and how they get inspired.

To learn more about Cédric, find him on Twitter.
Georgios is on Twitter as well.

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Audio Version

Video Version

Also, there is a video version that has a walkthrough of how they made their Scientific American data viz. You can find that on YouTube.

Resources Discussed

The chapter in my book R Without Statistics that this discussion led to is available as a draft. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] David: Hi, I'm David Keyes and I run R for the rest of us. You may think of R as a tool for complex statistical analysis, but it's much more than that from data visualization to efficient reporting, to improving your workflow. R can do it all on this podcast. I talk with people about how they use R in unique and creative ways.

[00:00:18] Join me and learn how art can help you.

[00:00:20] In this episode, I talk with Cédric Scherer and Georgios Karamanis. They're independent =designers= who regularly produce novel and visually appealing data visualization. They came to prominence in the art community, through their contributions, to the tidy Tuesday social data project. And they've parlayed this into freelance work.

[00:00:39] I reach out to them after seeing a visually stunning database they made in 2021. For scientific American on drought conditions in the United States. The interview you're about to hear was done as part of my in progress book, our, without statistics. We discussed how they got started with R and data viz.

[00:00:56] How Gigi pot and the Tidyverse have helped them, how they find inspiration and more. We don't cover code in this interview because discussing code doesn't really work well in audio. But the portion of my interview with Cedric and Georgia. Where we discuss their code is on YouTube. And I've added a link to that in the episode notes.

[00:01:13] Without further ado. I hope you enjoy my interview with Cédric Scherer and Georgios Karamanis.

[00:01:19] Great, well, thanks both for joining. I appreciate you. Being here, I'd love to have you maybe first start out by just telling me who you are and a bit about your background how you got into R and what you use it for today.

[00:01:32] Cedric, why don't you go ahead and start?

[00:01:35] Cedric: Yes, thanks for the invitation. I'm Cedric Scherer. I'm based in Berlin, Germany, I'm originally an ecologist or biologist becoming an ecologist, becoming a computational ecologist. So I did my PhD on the focus of wildlife diseases, animal movement, and a lot of R stuff. This is the usual tool you use as a scientist, and then got in touch with GG plot and suddenly my old passion of fonts and colors and design layout, and stuff matched with the programming. And that's how I ended up being mostly a freelance data viz designer, doing most of the work still with R and ggplot.

[00:02:11] David: Great, and Georgios, what about you?

[00:02:13] Georgios: Thanks for having us. So I'm a medical doctor, psychiatrist, and I live in Sweden in Uppsala, Sweden since 2016. I started research about two years or a little longer than that a few years ago. And my supervisor recommended to download our. So that I understand what our statistician was doing and I got hooked up almost immediately. And then I found out about the Tidy Tuesday challeng e, and started doing data viz with ggplot.

[00:02:48] David: It's interesting because both of you produce amazing data visualization, but. You know, it's not like you went to design school, like Cedric your the ecologist, right? Did I get that? And Georgios you're a medical doctor, you're a psychiatrist. Where does the data viz stuff come from for each of you?

[00:03:06] Cedric: I mean, data visualization is everywhere, right? So for scientists we have always 3, 5, 6 figures or more on tables and stuff in our studies presentations. And I always had passion and ideas of what looks good, what doesn't look good.

[00:03:19] I mean, it's a bit subjective, but there are the also some objective things people can agree on. And actually I was thinking about studying either graphics, design, or biology and ended up. Doing life sciences, because you get paid better and to get better jobs. I'm not sure if it's really true, but it was my guess back then or what people told me.

[00:03:38] Data visualization is everywhere and I'm pretty good in spotting problems. So visually perceptually, I would say so also during my studies and then during the PhD, I always, when I saw a presentation, I was like, yeah, why don't they use more intuitive colors or better colors, colorblindness issues and things like that, but also kind of like get white doesn't need to be so complicated or just.

[00:04:01] Black and white and boring. And yeah, that's basically how I got into it. I felt like, okay, we could spark this up. I was also not thinking so much about data and Gratiot and all this stuff. I was just, when I started taking Tuesday was just coming out, like everything you're not allowed to do in academia.

[00:04:16] I was just doing as I like. And that's actually also the fun part of, one of the fun parts of tidy Tuesday, I'd say.

[00:04:24] David: So for you, it sounds like during the date of his stuff was, was a way to kind of scratch that creative itch that you weren't able to get in some of the academic work Georgios for you using your we're using our, during like your medical training. I know you said that it was a professor or someone who recommended it to you.

[00:04:45] I'm curious what the motivation for you to start using it for, for the date of, is where that came from.

[00:04:51] Georgios: said I was the same when I was looking at other people's charts or presentations. I have strong opinions about the designs product about I mean, I knew there was a thing like making charts, but not because I didn't know about, can be some theater. I started coding and then I think it was mainly through tidy Tuesday, but I found out about, they put me as making a beautiful sharks. And now I'm using it for my research, of course,

[00:05:30] making plots and, uh,

[00:05:32] David: Okay, so you, use it for that as well? Cause I wasn't sure if okay. So it sounds like tidy Tuesday was a big piece. I mean, that's how, at least how I came to know the work that you do is it sounds like that was pretty instrumental for both of you. Is that, is that accurate?

[00:05:49] Cedric: Yes. So for me, I learned to up before. So the, the moment when I learned about was I always forget about 2015. I think it was 16, even when I w we had to do a small multiples or very fitting to the topic today. And there were packages like letters, and I was doing it actually for my bachelor or solve with base R so removing all the tick marks were moving all the stuff by hand and was tedious.

[00:06:11] Didn't look good. And I found about GG plot. I was just pasting code from some tutorials, like overflow, nothing broke the typical, like as tactics, I didn't know, just get into Rick's on how for the presentation. And afterwards I was diving in. So I learned a lot. I spent tons of time, maybe too much on, yeah.

[00:06:28] Willy learning. Did she plot and. Yeah, polishing my visualizations instead of writing my articles. So that's basically how I found out that them want to do more of the graphics part and less of the yeah. Publishing academia parts basically. And then I waited. So I found out about how you to stay was pretty inspired.

[00:06:47] And I was also learning a lot already. We're not participating. So it was founded in 2018 by Thomas and I found out yeah, exactly that time, I guess. And then one day after I handed in my thesis, I started kind of like working on tidy Tuesday for several days in the row. So basically my vacation after my thesis was tidy Tuesday.

[00:07:05] And I can just, as another anecdote, I just kind of like remembering exactly the moment when our facades visualization. I was actually on a workshop giving a workshop somewhere in Germany and I saw his, I think it was the plastic. One was your first one. Right? Can I guess the plastics. Yeah. Yeah. So, so he created this plastic spires out of bottles and stuff.

[00:07:28] So lots of icons and images. And I was like, who is he? I haven't never even seen him before. And then I found out that you basically never used the cheapo before, basically, but you can tell that story, but yeah. Can I funny because I met so many people thanks to tidy Tuesday. I mean, not just the followers, but we do people live chat with privately and yeah, it's a great initiative to learn, but also, especially for the portfolio and the network part, I think it's just great.

[00:07:55] David: What was the Georgia's. Do you want to talk about the plastic visualization that Cedric was, was mentioning?

[00:08:01] Georgios: Yeah, there was, and they just sent about plastic pollution. And I mean, it was of my first plots that I struggled a lot in the beginning. Of course I was still learning a lot and I had found the obvious package, I think it was . So I took, I console like bottles, plastic, water bottles, and found out the way to rotate them around the, and make out about blocks.

[00:08:33] David: And did you do that? Was that in GG plot? Or w okay.

[00:08:37] Georgios: it wasn't,

[00:08:38] David: Cause I know, right. Because I know Cedric said, you know, he started when he, when he started doing data and art, it was with, with bass. Are, is that the

[00:08:46] Cedric: to, there was no, cause you pull up that.

[00:08:49] David: So when, when was, when was that, that then that you started working with base our, for making database.

[00:08:55] Cedric: For me the first time. I mean, data is basically, I learned how to use R for doing stats and LMEs and all the stuff. And then yeah, then I was also doing plots, but this was the first contact I had with Arbor was 2008 that I really just followed the yabba was just really running, enter. I didn't understand anything of the code.

[00:09:16] I was hard enough to get the math behind it. And then that I really was using it on my own, starting to use the bus 2012. I'd say 11. 12. Yeah. But then yeah, until us would like, you have something you have to use because people use it and actually be fruited over at Exel, but it was not really enjoying it in a way, like I can spend the full day, like I do it nowadays.

[00:09:41] Like I can't stop. That's definitely not the situation before the plot that changed dramatically then.

[00:09:47] David: Okay, well, I want to come back to that in a second, but I'm curious Georgios, if you also did you, did you use base are applauding or did you, were you always using GG plot?

[00:09:57] Georgios: Actually, we started using base R after I learned a lot in tidy person, everything, because everything was already there. When I started coding an hour, it was three years ago. So it felt much easier to do everything in From the beginning. So I don't know,

[00:10:21] David: yeah. Okay. Yeah, so.

[00:10:22] Cedric: so

[00:10:23] David: Cedric, you talked about how now with ggplot you're happy to work in it all day. Whereas with base, R you, I mean, you made plots in it, but you didn't feel that . How, how is it that a package and R package can have that much, make that much of a difference in terms of your not only like what you can produce, but your enjoyment working with it.

[00:10:42] Cedric: Yeah, I think there are two layers to that. So one thing is obviously the creative output. So it's not looking at significance levels and fittings and stuff, but I can really be creative about it. And maybe I'm not spending so much time on the code, but more on the right font and the colors, which is actually outside of R but definitely tied to ggplot.

[00:11:01] So once you learn about ggplot, I'll always try and also to motivate that in my workshops. So even if you just grasp a few bits of it, if you can. General idea and it clicks. At some point you will be free to create anything you like, basically in aesthetic way or some animated way, of course, but let's focus on this like data visualization that gets into a report and to a manuscript or publication, you can basically create everything.

[00:11:27] And that's, I know people, I once remember that one person was coming at me and say like, yeah, you know, you're doing based off of juicy plot. And I was creating, recreating all the digital stuff for face art. So it seems possible, but I don't, I hated always OPA and par and all these settings, how to arrange things and super stressful.

[00:11:46] But I think it was also a bit hesitant to it to learn it because I'm not a programmer. I was like, not really, I was playing video games, but not really programming in my youth. And also it didn't have the fancy computer at home and I was studying biology and ecology. So I wasn't so much into coding actually.

[00:12:04] And then yeah, somehow digital change that I think from the design. The bit that I was kind of free and creative and then tidy rose came and really also enjoyed waiting card because for me it was way simpler to write and all there's lots of discussion about if it's better or not. I know both, but I actually never enjoyed using the apply functions for example, and stuff like that.

[00:12:25] And if, even if people now telling me like, that's the same as you're doing with the per package might be, but it just feels more native to me and more intuitive to do it in the tidy context. Yeah, somehow then it sparked. And also I had some, some colleagues and friends who were basically showing it to me.

[00:12:42] So I also had kind of like these idea of getting as far as, as they go while I wasn't really looking up to the base, our people were like, oh yeah, you do fancy things. But if that felt like something new and hot yeah.

[00:12:57] David: And I'm curious. So Sergeant, you talked about, you know, you've used space. Are you talked about, it sounds like you did some Excel Dataverse, but you didn't particularly enjoy that. I'm curious Georgios. Did you use, or have you used other tools to, to do database?

[00:13:12] Georgios: I mean, the only thing I used it was keynotes to make some simple charts for my presentations, but

[00:13:21] David: That's interesting. So you went straight from not, I mean, your, your introduction to not just to coding, but to actually making data is, was, are it sounds

[00:13:33] Georgios: yeah,

[00:13:34] David: because I, I.

[00:13:35] Georgios: correct.

[00:13:36] David: I mean, tell me if you think this is right, but I feel like most people I meet have, you know, like my story, for example, I used Excel a lot and made like fine data is in Excel.

[00:13:47] And I feel like moving to R has really helped me especially GG plot, but, but that's that, but your story sounds unusual in that you you started doing databases in R D. Was it something you just weren't interested in before or what? I'm curious, like why, why all the sudden three years ago where you're like, oh my gosh, like I need to learn our due date of is where, where did that come from?

[00:14:11] Georgios: I found out that data viz was a thing. I mean, I didn't know it before, so and then it felt that everything came together very nicely because I mean, it's part, parts of design, partly science, I mean, working with numbers. So I don't know. I haven't worked as a designer, but I I've always been interested in arts.

[00:14:36] I've been a photographer before. I mean, I've read books about everything is pretty easy for me going into the database. So it was the coding part.

[00:14:54] David: Oh, only the coding part, which for many people is the huge barrier. So

[00:15:02] Georgios: it wasn't Daisy, but.

[00:15:05] David: yeah. Yeah. Well I'm curious then that sort of brings me to another question about. Both of you, you know, in addition, you clearly have strong technical skills now at this point that allow you to work with our, you know, to make these high-quality data visualizations, but there's another side of it, right?

[00:15:23] Like you have to have a strong sense of aesthetics understand kind of what, like the design part of it is really important and understand what makes high quality database. So I'm curious, Georgia, you talked a bit about, you know, always having, while you've been a photographer, you've read books maybe Cedric, I could throw it to you.

[00:15:41] Like where did you develop those, that other half of the picture in terms of your design skills, to bring those, to be able to apply them to our and GG pot to make high-quality data is.

[00:15:52] Cedric: Yeah, interesting questions. I get this question from time to time also kind of like, can I give a workshop about it? And I was like, yeah, I'm not sure what to talk about. So what I can definitely say that really does kind of like it's like made up and I started this as a chat. I had already just kind of like, you can call passion or mainly many egg being like seeing wrong things.

[00:16:12] And I was always interested in fonts, so I kinda like was a bit into graffiti and street art. Not really, I didn't enjoy it because I was still already a perfectionist. So I was mostly drawing on my desk which I really enjoyed. I wasn't using a lot of colors. So I had a lot of markers with different colors and I mean, this is fun already, right?

[00:16:30] Styling letters and getting proportions right. And stuff like that. And also the layout and composition in general, how much white space, how do you fill up things that look somewhere. Empty. So I can't really pin it down to something. I just know that it's kind of like something which I'm always into also with legal and stuff.

[00:16:47] I was always sorting them. And I think my legal is kind of what my buildings or whatever I was doing. Creating look kind of like, yeah, not too mixed, for example. So maybe a bit pedantic in my head. I wasn't, I'm not really a reader that much, so I've definitely read about it, but more like whatever I need now.

[00:17:06] So if I need to decide on colors, so I pick it up somewhere. Like I learned from an all from Liza, for example, about it, you should not use the stereotyping baby blue and pink colors, or maybe you should depends on what's the intention, but different topic. So I pick it up here and there, but it's not really like that.

[00:17:25] I have the one book or the few things I just look up and I think I'm kind of like learning a lot from just looking at them. so that's maybe my kind of reading, looking at others, inspirational sources. And because I see the problems quite quickly, or I'm think I'm able to identify them. I can learn from these because I see like, oh, this doesn't work for me.

[00:17:47] Something strange about it. So I'm not definitely not going to do that. So for example, if it's about alignments and stuff like that. Yeah.

[00:17:56] David: What about you Georgia? So how, how, maybe if you want to talk a bit more about how you developed your you know, design skills and in building on that, if people want to kind of, you know, develop a similar or, you know, a strong sense of aesthetics as well, do you have recommendations for people about how they might do that?

[00:18:15] Georgios: Yeah. I don't know how I developed my design skills because I mean, I've looked at design or art all my life almost. So and as I said, I kind of, it's quite easy for me to understand what's what works or not. When I see something and I have no formal formal training, so I can't really translate it to or Something more concrete, but I, I don't know.

[00:18:50] I've been playing anyways design. I mean, drawing your logos, play with colors and such stuff. So I've trained some stuff I've learned or seen, but other than that, that's, it's, it's hard to pinpoint exactly.

[00:19:11] David: Sure. I mean, what I've heard both of you say is that in a lot of ways, the best way that you have learned, or that you've improved, your design skills is by watching and seeing what other people do. And I know that you have both you know, being able to showcase what you do largely through Twitter. I mean, tell me if that's wrong, but, but that's, that's the sense that I have is, has Twitter also been, where is that also where you go to, to see what other people are working on and get that inspiration, or are there other places that you go to.

[00:19:42] Cedric: So yeah, I definitely agree. Most of it showcasing on Twitter. I'm trying to also feed some other social media channels. I'm pretty bad at it. So currently I have an Instagram starting up, but it works the best out of the other LinkedIn and stuff. They don't work well for me. So for me, it's Twitter because I mean, it's also different from the behavior.

[00:20:00] You can also post some broken progress while the others are more polished stuff. So that's maybe the interesting bit of Twitter to get inspiration. So I wouldn't say it's really about the design so much. So of course I take snapshots here and there or bookmarks when I see something. But I would say I see this more in newspapers or designers portfolio wrap pages or on B hands, actually, I'm not.

[00:20:23] Much on Beyonce any more. I took quite a while or from books. So I love have books with, yeah, it does not even need to be data visualization or the latest stuff or the old ones. All, some others drawings could be also just nature walking around and seeing some, some combination of geometries or stuff. So really like the low-level inspiration also,

[00:20:44] David: Yeah,

[00:20:44] Cedric: especially for colors.

[00:20:46] Of course, if you see some, I don't know, advertisement or some, yeah, just some autumn colors or stuff like that. But yeah, Twitter is, is definitely very important. Not so much for inspiration maybe or more for exchange also seeing and maybe yeah, the, the rec and progress stuff. So I think this is something which is.

[00:21:05] For my feeling, at least mostly shared on Twitter that people just, oh, I made this artful thing. I didn't want it to do away. It is. Our, how's it called? Excellent by Arlen. How is it called art by accident? Accidental art, right? That's the one I searched for and I'm posting this as well. So I mean, I'm sometimes even polishing my accidents and then putting it up because I just like it, how they kind of like the geometries and colors mixed up and stuff like that.

[00:21:30] So I think these are very inspirational things. So I, I mean, we also gave us and I both did start like these, having these history or the progression of our charts, the design. And I really loved it. So if people in Beyonce or wherever, kind of like half or Maddie, for example, dusters, like having a long blog post of their drawings and what were options they did and what did they not use?

[00:21:51] And often from these things they didn't use in the end, I see something like, okay, this could be something I want to try and recycle for something else, because I like how it looks like. Yeah.

[00:22:03] David: What about you, Georgia? Is where do you go? Like where are some specific places that you go to find inspiration?

[00:22:08] Georgios: Three 30 and the websites I'm going to have I follow some websites RSS feeds and I mean, it's mostly, yeah, they use of course art artists of any kind like painters or comic artists or typography. Yeah, I like that too.

[00:22:36] Cedric: definitely.

[00:22:36] David: When you get to a certain point, like the inspiration seems like it's no longer specific. Like, I just want to see what data is people are doing instead, you're looking much broader and you're saying, I want to see, you know, in nature, for example, or photographers, like what they're doing and think about how, what they're doing well can apply to my date of his work.

[00:22:59] Cedric: Yeah, definitely. Plus one also on CapEx, I forgot about comics drawings. I mean, kids' books, for example, Alison super cool. Actually. So I mean, we both have, have kids or if I read a book and I mean, I just have a book laying here before. It's super cute. Fun. I love to use it. Somebody, I just need to find it for example stuff like that.

[00:23:17] Yeah. Or, and we also as mentioned graffiti and street art is also, I mean, they are using extreme colors. And if you may notice with my Brooke often, at least in the beginning, I was using vibrant colors and definitely often also using secondary and, and more outlines, which is also coming more from the graffiti scene.

[00:23:33] I realized at some points there might be also some things I just were kind of taking off. But at the same time, I'm still interested. I'm not doing it actively. I don't know the artist anymore, but if I go around in Berlin city, you definitely see a lots of graffiti stuff. And that's definitely also some sort of inspiration.

[00:23:50] David: Okay. Well, one last question so, you know, there are any number of tools that people can use to make databases. What do you think makes are particularly well suited for doing high-quality data? Visualization work, maybe Georgio is if you want to start.

[00:24:04] Georgios: Yeah. For me, it's a clock too. And all the other packages like extensions. I mean, it's very easy to do anything you want. I think the grammar of graphics makes sense. It's very logical then. Is it to work with I would say it's social.

[00:24:25] David: Well, tell me if this is a -correct summation, what you're saying, but it sounds like what you're saying. It's the flexibility, flexibility in terms of. Pack like kind of extensions that people have made for GG plot. So you're like, oh, I want to make a Ridge plot. Someone's made a package for that.

[00:24:40] But then also flexibility in terms of how you can output and share your work. Does that seem like a decent summation? What about for you, Cedric? What, what makes are particularly well suited for, for database?

[00:24:52] Cedric: Yeah, for me to really many, many different things. So I mean, coming from academia and so on the most upon thing, at least in the beginning was definitely the reproducibility and the will kind of like the transparency and stuff. And also. Being able to rerun the same thing again and not going to whatever tool you use.

[00:25:10] So I use PowerPoint and paint in the beginning to change my labels when it wasn't, there was not Gigi texts, for example. And then there was the next week rest by your call for, by your supervisor, by the revenue or by the editor. And you do the same thing over and over and over again. So this is just annoying.

[00:25:24] So that's really what I like. And. Even though I've never written a full manuscript and are like some people do it. I always kinda like, like to have knitted reports of my analysis and to visuals then, I mean, for some context, for some of my clients to my work, you just need code-based output. You can't do it manually because you have a pipeline, you have a workflow from the data to the output, which is then online and dashboard or somewhere in a shiny web app or whatever.

[00:25:51] So there you need to be, if you want to have something unusual, you need to be clever and also creative to get it brick. And also then if you have changing data also to be kind of like clever in foreseeing, any issues that could come up. So definitely the flexibility and creativity, and then it's definitely also the community.

[00:26:07] I have to admit. I mean, Tidy Tuesday, forced. I mean, I was into ggplot before, so I knew already that I might stick to ggplot2, but I know for many others that this is basically not only the Tidy Tuesday community. And this also changed a lot of Tidyverse, to be honest.

[00:26:21] So if you like, or not like the tidy idea or the Tidyverse idea, I think what really has changed. And I really attribute a lot of it to the Tidyverse people is to community and how helpful people are. So I'm always, if I have a problem with another program, it might be that I run into empty pages, old pages. I don't know whom to ask, or the people want to charge me in the outer world. I mean, Google for everything.

[00:26:49] And you will find either a solution already in the best case as a package or some code, or at least some person you might know, or you might work, can contact and he's friendly, or she, and that's really great.

[00:27:01] David: All right, well, Cedric and Georgios, thanks again for taking the time to chat and share the work that you've done here and all the database work that you do. I appreciate it.

[00:27:11] Cedric: yeah. Looking forward to everything you're doing with the others. Thanks for the invitation.

[00:27:15] Georgios: Thanks for having us. It's been really good.

[00:27:19] Thanks again for listening. I hope you found this conversation. Interesting. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it, David, at our, for the rest of us.com. Thanks.