I should think of a title involving the words “Small” and “Microscopy”

Our Physics Department Colloquium this week is on a topic I’m fond of: the analysis of super-resolution microscopy images. This occurrence isn’t surprising, since I invited the speaker, Alex Small, with whom I co-wrote a recent review paper on the subject. The problem that superresolution microscopy confronts is that it’s hard to see tiny things. … Continue reading I should think of a title involving the words “Small” and “Microscopy”

You can use any model you want, as long as it’s linear and has a positive slope

It is inherently challenging to use a model to make predictions beyond the range of data to which the model was fit — making predictions about the future, for example, based on the past and present. Or, as the Danish proverb more elegantly says, “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” Still, there’s … Continue reading You can use any model you want, as long as it’s linear and has a positive slope

(Another) bad graph

I like graphs. At their best they are useful, elegant, and thought-provoking. At their worst, they’re infuriating. Modern systems-ish biology seems to have an abundance of awful graphs, even in good papers (as noted earlier, for example), perhaps because the complex statistical procedures it often uses are hard to make sense of. There’s no excuse … Continue reading (Another) bad graph