YAKOV RAPOPORT, The doctors'plot, transl. Natina Perova and Raissa Bobrova, London, Fourth Estate, 1991, pp. xii, 280, illus., £17.95 (1-872180-13-2). On 13 January 1953, the astounded citizens of the USSR heard a massive "criminal conspiracy" denounced. Prominent Soviet physicians had conspired to kill the leaders of the country by medical means. A round of arrests followed involving high-rank...

Writers of statistics textbooks tend to copy other textooks rather than draw on experience. This leaves a serious ap: Techniques that are highly useful in practice are not aught. With this series of columns I am trying to fill that ap. The first column [1] pointed out that doing something imperfect) is better than doing nothing. The second [2] was bout the value of transforming your data. A thi...

We introduce a new visualization method for temporal data, Spiral Theme Plot, by combining ThemeRiver method, spiral patterns, and scatter plot technique. Similar to ThemeRiver, data in different categories (themes) are visualized in different bands, but also in a spiral pattern. Themes are stacked along a spiral curve, which represent the time axis. Individual data points are plotted within th...

Computer-assisted interactive visualization has become a valuable tool for discovering the underlying meaning of tabular data, including categorical tabular data. The capabilities of the more traditionally mundane kinds of pictures like scatter plots can be expanded to usefully depict categorical tabular data by incorporating annotations and transforms, and by integrating the extensions into an...

We propose a procedure for supervised classification that is based on potential functions. The potential of a class is defined as a kernel density estimate multiplied by the class’s prior probability. The method transforms the data to a potential-potential (pot-pot) plot, where each data point is mapped to a vector of potentials. Separation of the classes, as well as classification of new data ...

The effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages were studied in two experiments. The experimental passages exemplify a class of simple narrative stories that is described by a generative grammar of plot structures. A comprehension model is proposed that assumes a hierarchical organizational framework of stories in memory, determined by the grammar, r...

BACKGROUND Graphical displays of results allow researchers to summarise and communicate the key findings of their study. Diagnostic information should be presented in an easily interpretable way, which conveys both test characteristics (diagnostic accuracy) and the potential for use in clinical practice (predictive value). METHODS We discuss the types of graphical display commonly encountered...

Old-growth forest ecosystems comprise a mosaic of patches in different successional stages, with the fraction of the landscape in any particular state relatively constant over large temporal and spatial scales. The size distribution and return frequency of disturbance events, and subsequent recovery processes, determine to a large extent the spatial scale over which this old-growth steady state...