In 2013, Nature Methods launched Points of Significance, a popular column devoted to enhancing statistical literacy among life scientists. Seven years, 50 articles and ~471,000 accesses later, authors Martin Krzywinski and Dr. Naomi Altman continue to illuminate key statistical methods with profound importance in biological research.
As a contributing author to Nature Method’s data visualization and design column Points of View, GSC Staff Scientist Martin Krzywinski, together with then chief editor Dr. Daniel Evanko, recognized a need for a column focused on statistics. Dr. Naomi Altman, Professor of Statistics and Bioinformatics at Pennsylvania State University, was recruited to co-author the column and in 2013, Points of Significance was launched.
The duo published their first article in August 2013, entitled “Importance of being uncertain”. In August 2020, they published their 50th, “Uncertainty and the management of epidemics”. Over the last seven years, their articles have illuminated key aspects of statistics as it applies to biology, using elegant examples and visuals with minimal mathematical notation.
“When I read the first Points of View columns by Bang Wong, I fell in love with his style of writing immediately. It seemed like every word was both necessary and sufficient,” says Krzywinski, who has strived to apply the same level of simplicity and clarity to Points of Significance. “Each draft is a work of love and dedication. It is not uncommon for Naomi and me to write and rewrite each sentence several times. We aim for a lucid and clear tone, steering clear of jargon and hedging or uncertain language.”
“Our objective is to present statistically correct material with a minimum of mathematics and notation,” says Dr. Altman. “Martin has a special talent for coming up with insightful examples, graphics and demos that shape the narrative. I've also learned that sometimes cutting details or simplifying an example clarifies the important themes.”
Many articles have focused on statistical methods that are widely used or misused in biological sciences, while others were inspired by current events, such as Modeling epidemics and P values and the search for significance. For several articles, Krzywinski and Dr. Altman have been joined by co-authors, including Dr. Jake Lever and Dr. Jasleen Grewal at the GSC, to augment their expertise.
“Every column teaches me something new about statistics - whether we are working with a co-author on a topic unfamiliar to me, or it is just Martin and myself working on something I previously thought I understood well,” says Dr. Altman.
“The column taught me statistics I didn't know and for the statistics I did know, it taught me to know it in a way I couldn't have otherwise known. It has also taught me to construct a narrative and manage the flow of ideas, information and details. Finally, it taught me how to make tiny figures,” says Krzywinski.
Moving forward, the team will continue to take us on deep dives into important statistical topics and is now brainstorming ways to present the column for teaching purposes.
“We plan to continue the column until we run out of topics or it stops being fun,” says Dr. Altman.
In 2015, the wide readership and enthusiastic responses received led Nature Methods to release of the entire Points of Significance column freely available.
Authors
Martin Krzywinski is a staff scientist at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
Naomi Altman is a Professor Emeritus of Statistics at The Pennsylvania State University.
Contributing authors
Ottar Bjørnstad is Distinguished Professor of Entomology and Biology at The Pennsylvania State University
Katriona Shea is Professor of Biology at The Pennsylvania State University
Jasleen Grewal is a recent PhD graduate from the Jones lab at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
Kiranmoy Das is a faculty member at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India.
Luca Greco is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Sannio in Benevento, Italy.
Geroge Luta Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA.
Byran Smucker is an Associate Professor of Statistics at Miami University in Oxford, OH, USA.
Danilo Bzdok is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a Visiting Professor at INRIA/Neurospin Saclay in France.
Jake Lever is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Bioengineering at Stanford University in Stanford, California, USA.
Paul Blainey is an Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT and Core Member of the Broad Institute.
Anthony Kulesa is a graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT.
Jorge López Puga is a Professor of Research Methodology at UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia.
Articles
50 | Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Uncertainty and the management of epidemics. Nature Methods 17:867–868.
49 | Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics. Nature Methods 17:557–558.
48 | Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Modeling infectious epidemics. Nature Methods 17:455–456.
47 | Grewal, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Markov models — training and evaluation of hidden Markov models. Nature Methods 17:121–122.
46 | Grewal, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Hidden Markov models. Nature Methods 16:795–796.
45 | Grewal, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Markov chains. Nature Methods 16:663–664.
44 | Das, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Quantile regression. Nature Methods 16:451–452.
43 | Greco, L., Luta, G., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Analyzing outliers: Robust methods to the rescue. Nature Methods 16:275–276.
42 | Smucker, B., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Two-level factorial experiments Nature Methods 16:211–212.
41 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2018) Points of significance: Predicting with confidence and tolerance Nature Methods 15:843–844.
40 | Smucker, B., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2018) Points of significance: Optimal experimental design Nature Methods 15:559–560.
39 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2018) Points of significance: Curse(s) of dimensionality Nature Methods 15:299–400.
38 | Bzdok, D., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2018) Points of significance: Statistics vs machine learning. Nature Methods 15:233–234.
37 | Bzdok, D., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2018) Points of significance: Machine learning: supervised methods. Nature Methods 15:5–6.
36 | Bzdok, D., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2017) Points of significance: Machine learning: a primer. Nature Methods 14:1119–1120.
35 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of significance: Ensemble methods: Bagging and random forests. Nature Methods 14:933–934.
34 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2017) Points of significance: Classification and regression trees. Nature Methods 14:757–758.
33 | Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2017) Points of significance: Principal component analysis. Nature Methods 14:641–642.
32 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of significance: Clustering. Nature Methods 14:545–546.
31 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of significance: Tabular data. Nature Methods 14:329–330.
30 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of significance: Interpreting P values. Nature Methods 14:213–214.
29 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2017) Points of significance: P values and the search for significance. Nature Methods 14:3–4.
28 | Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Regularization. Nature Methods 13:803–804.
27 | Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Model selection and overfitting. Nature Methods 13:703–704.
26 | Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Classifier evaluation. Nature Methods 13:603–604.
25 | Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541–542.
24 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2016) Points of significance: Regression diagnostics. Nature Methods 13:385–386.
23 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2016) Points of significance: Analyzing outliers: Influential or nuisance. Nature Methods 13:281–282.
22 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2015) Points of significance: Multiple linear regression. Nature Methods 12:1103–1104.
21 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Simple linear regression. Nature Methods 12:999–1000.
20 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Association, correlation and causation. Nature Methods 12:899–900.
19 | Puga, J.L, Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2015) Points of significance: Bayesian networks. Nature Methods 12:799–800.
18 | Kulesa, A., Krzywinski, M., Blainey, P. & Altman, N. (2015) Points of significance: Sampling distributions and the bootstrap. Nature Methods 12:477–478.
17 | Puga, J.L, Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2015) Points of significance: Bayesian statistics. Nature Methods 12:277–278.
16 | Puga, J.L, Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2015) Points of significance: Bayes' theorem. Nature Methods 12:277–278.
15 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Split plot design. Nature Methods 12:165–166.
14 | Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Sources of variation. Nature Methods 12:5–6.
13 | Krzywinski, M., Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Two factor designs. Nature Methods 11:1187–1188.
12 | Krzywinski, M., Altman, N. & Blainey, P. (2014) Points of significance: Nested designs. Nature Methods 11:977–978.
11 | Blainey, P., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Replication. Nature Methods 11:879–880.
10 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and blocking. Nature Methods 11:699–700.
9 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Designing comparative experiments. Nature Methods 11:597–598.
8 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Non-parametric tests. Nature Methods 11:467–468.
7 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Comparing samples — Part II — Multiple testing. Nature Methods 11:355–356.
6 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Comparing samples — Part I — t–tests. Nature Methods 11:215–216.
5 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Visualizing samples with box plots. Nature Methods 11:119–120.
4 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2013) Points of significance: Power and sample size. Nature Methods 10:1139–1140.
3 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2013) Points of significance: Significance, P values and t–tests. Nature Methods 10:1041–1042.
2 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2013) Points of significance: Error bars. Nature Methods 10:921–922.
1 | Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2013) Points of significance: Importance of being uncertain. Nature Methods 10:809–810.