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October 22, 2012

XKCD graphs via Python #CodeGeek

XCKD web comic influence has now
crossed over to Python programming code. 
Say "XKCD-style" and a great number of people will know exactly what you mean. For everyone else XKCD is a web-based comic that has steadily gained rep among geeks, especially coders and math nerds. The visual style is decidedly sparse and obviously hand drawn -- the focus is on the ideas, not the artwork. In this sense XKCD is very similar to mock-up tools that purposely generate "rough sketches" rather than polished facades.

In the past month a movement has popped up among coders to create "XKCD style" graphing routines. In just a matter of weeks several solutions have surfaced but the first I happened to run across was written in Python...

Get It from the Source
Rather than simply restate content from other's blog posts, I'll link right to the sources. In summary, the past month or so has seen a small explosion of interest in creating not-so-specific graphing routines for a number of different coding languages. Although the general desire was to create "rough mock-up" graphs and charts a la Balsamiq and Mockingbird, the specific style cited was that of the web comic XKCD. There is an extra measure of geek factor in that since XKCD often bases its graph-related-humor on actual mathematical formulas (Science!...It works...)

XKCD comic reproduced using Python and actual graphs.

XKCD via Python (MatPlotLib)

http://jakevdp.github.com/blog/2012/10/07/xkcd-style-plots-in-matplotlib/
and
http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-diagrams-transforming-serious-to-funny/

XKCD via LaTeX:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd-style-diagram-in-tex

XKCD via JavaScript (with D3)
http://dan.iel.fm/xkcd/

XKCD in JAVA
http://www.gicentre.org/handy/

XKCD via R
http://drunks-and-lampposts.com/2012/10/02/clegg-vs-pleb-an-xkcd-esque-chart/
and
http://phytools.blogspot.com/2012/10/bug-fix-in-xkcdtree-xkcd-caribbean.html





1 comment:

  1. I also made a web version for making XKCD-style graphs!

    http://xkcdgraphs.com/

    ReplyDelete