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Nicola Rennie

@nrennie.bsky.social

8K followers 830 following 740 posts

📊 Data visualisation specialist. 💻 #RStats | #Python | #D3. 🎨 Generative artist. 🏃‍♀️ Runner. Website: https://nrennie.rbind.io/ She/her. Views my own.

nrennie.rbind.io

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · Sep 11

I've written a short blog post introducing "The Art of Visualization with ggplot2"!

This book is all about the end-to-end process of creating charts with #ggplot2 📊 including data wrangling, sketching, and styling your plots!

nrennie.rbind.io/blog/art-of-...

#RStats #DataViz #TidyTuesday

Introducing The Art of Visualization with ggplot2 – Nicola Rennie

I’ve written a book! This blog post gives a brief introduction to The Art of Visualization with ggplot2, a book of data visualization case studies showing the end-to-end process of building charts, st...

nrennie.rbind.io

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 12h

Code: github.com/nrennie/tidy...

tidytuesday/2025/2025-10-14 at main · nrennie/tidytuesday

This repository contains the R, Python, D3, and Svelte code used to produce my visualisations for the #TidyTuesday challenges. - nrennie/tidytuesday

github.com

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 12h

A themed chart for #TidyTuesday this week using data from the FAO on food security!

🌳 Voronoi treemap data wrangling with {WeightedTreemap}
🎨 Colours from {rcartocolor}
📊 Plotted with #ggplot2

#RStats #DataViz

Infographic showing a Voronoi treemap stylised to look like a dinner plate with images of cutlery beside it. Areas show the total protein supply for different countries, coloured by continent. Annotations highlight specific values i.e. China is largest, and Iceland largest per capita.

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 17h

Over the last 3 years I've been collecting resources to share with people interested in data freelancing. I've recently compiled those resources in a GitHub Repository.

If you are interested in data freelancing, these resources may help you navigate that transition.

github.com/Cghlewis/fre...

GitHub - Cghlewis/freelancing_resources: Resources for data freelancers

Resources for data freelancers. Contribute to Cghlewis/freelancing_resources development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Nadieh Bremer @nadiehbremer.com · 1d

Just released my newsletter with new projects and updates, such as a data art collection about food and voronoi treemaps about health and death. Read it in full here:
visualcinnamon.substack.com/p/2025-q4-ne...

A Data Art Collection About the Foods We Eat, Voronoi Treemaps about Health and Death and more...

I got to work on another Data Art collection again! This time visualizing the foods we eat. But I also create nine charts for the European Union, wrote a new blog and have some updates to share about ...

visualcinnamon.substack.com

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 1d

Afternoon walks are better when the leaves are crunchy 🍂

Photo of a forest trail with the path covered in orange leaves.

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Claudio Fronterre @claudiofronterre.bsky.social · Aug 2

💭 I've been reflecting on how AI tools like ChatGPT are changing how we learn. They're fast and convenient but are they making us skip the deeper part of the learning process?

Curious how others are thinking about this 👇

🔗 tinyurl.com/ai-learning-...

#AI #LearningWithAI #EdTech #CriticalThinking

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 1d

Looking through photos from @wombat.numbat.space and realising how much I talk with my hands 😂

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 1d

Developing your data visualisation skills in ggplot2, Tue, Nov 4, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup

In this session, we'll be working through the process of developing a visualisation in ggplot2. We'll start with a brand new dataset and create some exploratory plots; sket

www.meetup.com

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 1d

I'm really excited to be running this session for @rladiesrome.bsky.social next month! 📊

We'll be talking about data viz design, building charts in ggplot2, and tips for how to develop your viz skills!

#DataViz #ggplot2 #RStats #RLadies

Event flyer showing date of event as November 4 at 6pm CET, and the title developing your data visualisation skills in ggplot2

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Ben Harrap @bharrap.bsky.social · 5d

I clearly had a lot of thoughts/feelings from reading Terry's blog post, so I wrote one of my own

It ended up being a bit of a stream-of-thought post but I think it captures some of my worries

benharrap.com/post/2025-10...

#statssky #episky #academicsky

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 4d

But you might find cool things down the rabbit hole...

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 4d

PS I wouldn't call using AI a "collaboration" since they can't think, nor would I call generative AI an intern for similar reasons...

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 4d

What I found in this experiment is that generative AI is good at the quick data viz tasks, but can't really do the ones that take time without a lot of extra info/prompts. Both examples here are similar to the ones I generated.

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 4d

I think if you already have a best practices document, an idea of what makes a good chart, and a style guide to follow then most of the work is already done.

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

econmaett @econmaett.github.io · 5d

Ross Ihaka: The Open-Hearted Data Hero
#rstats
www.historyofdatascience.com/ross-ihaka-t...

“R changed my opinion of humanity to some extent, to see how people are really willing to freely give of themselves and produce something larger than themselves without any thought of personal glory.”

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Ilya Kashnitsky @ikashnitsky.phd · 5d

😍 just wow ❤️
www.pechakucha.com/presentation...
Thanks to @emilhvitfeldt.bsky.social I learned today of the PechaKucha presentation format — 20 slides, 20 seconds each, auto progressing 💡
So, visiting the website, I just clicked the presentation of the day button — and wow 😍

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 5d

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

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UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation

Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 6d

Wondering if you can outsource your data viz work to ChatGPT? 📊

I tested out a few different generative AI tools, giving them prompts to visualise two different data sets. If you're interested in the results, you can read them here: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/gen-ai-...

#RStats #Python #DataViz #GenAI

Generative AI for Data Visualisation – Nicola Rennie

Can generative AI create good data visualisations? This blog post compares the performance of ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini when presented with a generic request to visualise a dataset.

nrennie.rbind.io

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 5d

Yes, definitely - that's one of the points I make in the post. The point of this exercise was to see how it responds to a generic request of "can you visualise this?" (because that's often how data viz requests arrivw in practice).

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 6d

Generative AI for Data Visualisation – Nicola Rennie

Can generative AI create good data visualisations? This blog post compares the performance of ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini when presented with a generic request to visualise a dataset.

nrennie.rbind.io

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 6d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 6d

Data dictionary template: osf.io/ynqcu
Project summary template: osf.io/q6g8d
Dataset level README template: osf.io/tk4cb

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Reposted by Nicola Rennie

Data Visualization Society @datavizsociety.bsky.social · 6d

📊 How can you turn data visualization into a community experience?

Nina Koch (@nk-yeahyeah.bsky.social) shares her insights and lessons from a fascinating, fast-paced workshop where participants co-created a datavis about their changing interests over time.

nightingaledvs.com/datavis-as-a...

Datavis as a Community Experience: How to (Not) Create a Datavis in a Group, Nightingale

Do you know individuals who seem to focus on one thing for their whole life? I’m on the opposite side of the scale.

nightingaledvs.com

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Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 7d

The data isn't mine. The source of the data is here: github.com/natanast/Eur... which scrapes the data from Wikipedia: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroLea...

EuroleagueBasketball/data-raw/01.R at main · natanast/EuroleagueBasketball

An R package providing data on Euroleague Basketball - natanast/EuroleagueBasketball

github.com

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 7d

Code: github.com/nrennie/tidy...

tidytuesday/2025/2025-10-07 at main · nrennie/tidytuesday

This repository contains the R, Python, D3, and Svelte code used to produce my visualisations for the #TidyTuesday challenges. - nrennie/tidytuesday

github.com