Today we're gonna have a look at data
visualisation. Data visualisation is a
way of representing information in a
artistic way, in an interesting way;
scientists might be happy with scatter
plots and black and white boring graphs
but if you want to communicate
information and data to the public you
want it to be fun, you want it to be
enjoyable, you want it to be colourful. And
we thought we might have a look at a
particular guy's work, a guy called Martin
Krzywinski. Today we're actually going to
look at some of his more numbery but
artistic work. So we're gonna have a look
at him finding beauty shall we say, artistry,
in the randomness of pi. So we've got it
down here, this is pi, in a beautiful
colourful way. Now this is first of all
the most simple way I think that you
could have done this, all he's done is
taken the digits of pi and he's given
each digit a different colour. So it
starts with 3, so it looks like 3
is an orange colour there. 1 is a red,
4 is a yellow, 1 again is red and
then 5 is green, and I think that's
a 9 that's purple - it's made this
really beautiful poster. You can kind of
see the randomness of it though, I don't
see there's any particular pattern to
the colours; which reflects the
randomness of the digits of pi as well.
He took that a step further and he
started to colour the centre of the
circles using the colour of the next
digit. I think he only did that just to
make it a little bit prettier; but he
was- I think he found it interesting
because he started to join up digits
that had the same colours in them, which
looks like this, there you go.
Can you see that- so he's connected
digits or adjacent digits in his poster
that have the same colour, so they'd be
the same number. And he kind of makes
these disconnected networks. I don't
think there's any great mathematical truth
to find underneath this; this is for art.
And Martin's very clear about this
himself; this
is less about the mathematics and more
about the beauty of it. But it is
intriguing as well. The other way you
could do this is if you put the digits
of pi in a spiral like this. This kind of
reminds me of the tiling, you know, in a
Roman bathhouse, something like that,
maybe that's the colours he's used. But to
take this a step further - and this I
think is one of our favourites. I
think this is one of Brady's favourites
isn't it? I think we should just
appreciate the beauty of that for a
moment, before we describe it, before we
ruin really the beauty of it by
describing it. We should just appreciate that.
Now what he's done there, he's connected
the digits together as you go through
the digits of pi. So he started at 3, and
then he's connected 3 to 1,
so you'll go here. And he's connected 1 to
4, so it will go down here. And he's
connected 4 to 1 so it goes back to 1,
then it'll go to 5, and that'll go to 9,
and he's connecting them in that way. And
he's also given each digit a colour as
well. So it's like a path, he's made a
path. He's put the numbers in a circle: 0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up to 9 and you've made a path.
And it makes this beautiful circular
piece of art. Data visualisation's hugely
important, it goes way back. We could
talk about Florence Nightingale, she had
to represent her statistics that she had
in the Crimean War when she was a nurse,
and the deaths that she was suffering on
the wards, it was because they weren't
clean enough, and she would represent
this data- she was a mathematician
herself, Florence Nightingale fantastic.
And she had these things called Rose
diagrams, which I actually think are hideous,
but they are a similar idea. They're
representing data in a visual way. I mean,
a more simple example of that is a pie
graph representing data in a visual way.
And what these guys now - and I think it's
become quite a
recently - is to make it beautiful as well.
And that's important because to
communicate especially to the general
public you want to be able to look at
this information, understand it, and enjoy
looking at it and you'll appreciate it
better. We can talk about serious
mathematics, subjects like combinatorics,
which is very visual as well. And you can
then do maths through pictures and
diagrams and things like this; networks
and graph theory and things like that. In
this example that we've got here, there
is actually something we can look at. So
we think that pi is pretty random;
Martin actually compared pi here with a
few randomly generated numbers. So he
generated- these aren't pi, these are
randomly generated numbers, he did the
same sort of artistry. And you can see
the similar sorts of patterns coming
through. Pi has the appearance of a
randomly generated number. Another piece
of art by Martin is the same idea again,
our circular paths, but here he's put
little dots on the outside just to show
you where the the lines are coming from
and where they're going to. So if it's
3.141 then above the 3 he's shown it
with a little dot that it's going to the
number 1; and then above the 1 it shows
that he's come from the number 3. It's
just showing where it's going to and
where it's coming from.
So the size of dots means it's- that
this occurs more often; actually look,
look at this one. There's a big purple
dot. And this shows that it's actually
purple, it means 9, and it's above the 9
here. What it's showing is it's- there's a
there's a sequence in pi that is just
9999 - it's the Feynman point, which I
know Brady is a big fan of, which is six
consecutive 9s somewhere around the
760th something digit? I think it's 762
digit in pi. And you can see it - that is
there.
Those are six consecutive 9s and it
makes a big blob because it's coming
from 9 repeatedly, repeatedly.
Martin has done this for other numbers
as well; he's done it for the golden
ratio, another famous mathematical number.
He's done this for e, another famous
mathematical number. And what he was
interested in though, when he started
doing that, was where they coincide. What
he did is he lined up these three
special mathematical numbers, he lined
them up and he wanted to look at where
they had the same digits. Now because
these numbers are kind of random really,
when they have the same digit that's
just random. So for all three numbers to
have the same digit, that happens with
a probability of one in a hundred. But
when he lined them up he got something
he called the Accidental Similarity
Number. And he discovered that, yes, they
do line up with the same digit about one
in a hundred - which is what probability
tells us - so they have a sort of an
average gap between lining up of about
100. And he started to experiment with
his accidental similarity number, he made
some pieces of art based on that as well.
There you go here's another piece, here's
another one of our circular ones here.
And doesn't it look pretty? You should go
to his website as well where he'll
explain more details about how all these
things were made.
[Preview] Can you do that again and this time talk
me through it as you do it? - You ask a lot Brady.