Which design decisions with the d3.js library do you regret most in hindsight? p.s. Huge fan! typhoon_mary NO RAGRETS. Just kidding!There are a few inconsistencies with layouts, particularly: should layouts create new data, or should layouts modify existing data? Modifying inputs is messy (for example, you can inadvertently overwrite properties), but wrappers are also clumsy. I'm still unsure of the right solution. Ideally, layouts should be stateless functions that take input (primary) data and return derived (secondary) data for the purpose of laying out visual elements.A close second is whether the Selection class should "extend" from Array. This was a questionable decision. Extending Array isn't really possible before ES6, so it requires modifying the prototype chain. And selections aren't flat arrays of elements: they are nested. I expect that in D3 4.0 selections will be truly hierarchical (arbitrary-depth trees of elements, like the DOM and like data) and extend Object instead.

How much time goes into "looking for new interesting data sets" vs. "cleaning the data" vs. "writing code/visualising the data" vs. "doing the write up"? (and are there any other important steps that I've missed?) frostickle It's usually around 80% data, 20% visual & design Typically might break down like this (% overall time taken) REDDIT Hi, I'm David McCandless, founder of Information is Beautiful. Love pie. Hate pie-charts. AMAs are beautiful.

Broadly, I'm interested in the process of data analysis/science and how to make it easier, faster, and more fun. That's what has lead to the development of my most popular packages like ggplot2, dplyr, tidyr, stringr. This year, I've been particularly interested in making it as easy as possible to get data into R. That's lead to my work on the DBI, haven, readr, readxl, and httr packages. Please feel free to ask me anything about the craft of data science. I'm also broadly interested in the craft of programming, and the design of programming languages. I'm interested in helping people see the beauty at the heart of R and learn to master it as easily as possible. As well as a number of packages like devtools, testthat, and roxygen2, I've written two books along those lines: Advanced R, which teaches R as a programming language, mostly divorced from its usual application as a data analysis tool. R packages, which teaches software development best practices for R: documentation, unit testing, etc. Please ask me anything about R programming! Other things you might want to ask me about: I work at RStudio. I'm the chair of the infrastructure steering committee of the R Consortium. I'm a member of the R Foundation. I'm a fellow in the American Statistical Association. I'm an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Rice University: that means they don't pay me and I don't do any work for them, but I still get to use the library. I was a full time Assistant Professor for four years before joining RStudio. These days I do a lot of programming in C++ via Rcpp. Many questions about my background, and how I got into R, are answered in my interview at priceonomics. A lot of people ask me how I can get so much done: there are some good answers at quora. In either case, feel free to ask for more details! Outside of work, I enjoy baking, cocktails, and bbq: you can see my efforts at all three on my instagram. I'm unlikely to be able to answer any terribly specific questions (I'm an amateur at all three), but I can point you to my favourite recipes and things that have helped me learn.

Are there any firewalls in place if you happen to find dormant microbacterial life on an asteroid? j938920 We consider this to be a very low probability event. We don't expect any microorganisms on Bennu. It is too small and the radiation doses would kill anything living on the asteroid in a very short time. We had to prove this as part of our Planetary Protection rating-which is Unrestricted Earth Returnmeaning that we do not have to take any special precautions to avoid contaminating the Earth with extraterrestrial life. Instead, we hope to find organic molecules that may have led to the origin of life on Earth. We will focus on measuring the organic molecular inventory of the samples but don't have any plans for biological assays. We will keep the sample under nitrogen purge to avoid contaminating it with terrestrial microbes.-Dante What an exciting time to be alive! I actually have three questions. 1) What are some of the main differences and similarities between the OSIRIS-REx and the past ESA Rosetta mission? Besides sample return. REDDIT NASA Mission AMA: We are scientists and engineers preparing for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's Earth flyby tomorrow. Ask us anything! OSIRIS-REX R/SCIENCE Thanks for the great questions, Reddit! We're done answering for the day and are off to finish preparations for tomorrow's Earth Gravity Assist maneuver. Tomorrow, NASA's asteroid-hunting spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, will fly by Earth and use the planet's gravitational pull to slingshot itself onto a new trajectory. This maneuver, called an Earth Gravity Assist (EGA), will put the spacecraft on course to rendezvous with a primitive, near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. The spacecraft will reach Bennu next year, map the asteroid, and collect a sample of surface material (called regolith) that will be returned to Earth for study in 2023. This mission will bring the largest sample of space material to Earth since the Apollo missions' lunar samples. We're a group of scientists and engineers based at the University of Arizona-home to the mission's Principal Investigator's office and the Science Processing Operations Center-ready to answer your questions about OSIRIS-REx, EGA, and the mission to collect some of the oldest material in the solar system. We'll be online from 1 to 3 pm PST (4 to 6 pm EST).

LIGO-COLLABORATION R/SCIENCE Hello Reddit, we will be answering questions starting at 1 PM EST. We have a large team of scientists from many different timezones, so we will continue answering questions throughout the week. Keep the questions coming! About this Discovery: On January 4, 2017 the LIGO twin detectors detected gravitational waves for the third time. The gravitational waves detected this time came from the merger of 2 intermediate mass black holes about 3 billion lightyears away! This is the furthest detection yet, and it confirms the existence of stellar-mass black holes. The black holes were about 32 solar masses and 19 solar masses which merged to form a black hole of about 49 solar masses. This means that 2 suns worth of energy was dispersed in all directions as gravitational waves (think of dropping a stone in water)! More info can be found here Simulations and graphics: Simulation of this detections merger Animation of the merger with gravitational wave representation The board of answering scientists: