Nathan Yau is an American statistician and

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

expert.

Early life

Nathan Chun-Yin Yau grew up in

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, makin ...

. He received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in electrical engineering and computer science from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He graduated in 2007 with a

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

and in 2013 with a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in statistics from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. His dissertation was titled "An Online Tool for Personal Data Collection and Exploration" and focused on self-surveillance techniques. Yau's earlier self-surveillance work on the "Personal Environmental Impact Report" was featured in Yau's chapter of the book ''Beautiful Data'', published in 2009.

Career

Yau is known for his blog ''FlowingData'' in which he publishes writing and tutorials on

information design Information design is the practice of presenting information in a way that fosters an efficient and effective understanding of the information. The term has come to be used for a specific area of graphic design related to displaying information ...

and

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...

, as well as visualizations and

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

-related projects created by other professionals. He is the author of books "''Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics''" (2011) and "''Data Points: Visualization That Means Something''" (2013). Since 2014, Yau has worked at the U.S. Census as a research mathematical statistician.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yau, Nathan Living people Digital artists Information graphic designers Data scientists People from Fresno, California UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Year of birth missing (living people) United States Census Bureau people