Data Visualization on Kailas Venkitasubramanian

Announcing nationalparkscolors - Color palettes inspired by America's National Parks

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” - John Muir

Beautiful Chord Diagrams with Flourish

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a moment in data visualization where a chart stops being a chart and becomes a conversation starter. Chord diagrams do that reliably. Whenever I’ve dropped one into a presentation or a report, someone in the room leans forward. They want to trace the lines. They want to understand what connects to what. That reaction is exactly why I keep coming back to them.

What Is a Chord Diagram?

A chord diagram is a circular visualization that shows relationships between entities. Imagine a circle divided into arcs — each arc represents a category or group. Ribbons stretch between arcs, connecting them. The width of each ribbon encodes the magnitude of the relationship: a thick ribbon means a strong or frequent connection; a thin one means the opposite.

Switching from ArcGIS to QGIS (and a bit of R too)

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have been using ArcGIS for longer than I care to admit. I started with it during my postgraduate years, and for a long time it was just the GIS software, the one everyone used, the one you learned if you wanted to do spatial analysis seriously. Our university has an enterprise license, so it has always been available, and old habits die hard.

But lately, I find myself opening it less and less. And when I do, there is usually a nagging feeling that I could be doing this in QGIS instead.

Comparison Slider for figures and images with RICV

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There is no end to all the magic you can do with R. I come across at least one nifty tool in the web everyday. RICV is one such awesome little visualization package that lets you compare plots using sliders.

Here’s a short introduction of RICV’s magic.

Get set up

Install the package from github and call the libraries you need to create visualizations. ggplot is my viz workhorse. I also call ggthemr because it lets me use the rust theme whose color palettes work nicely with this website theme :).