Nathan Yau is an American statistician and data visualization expert.

Nathan Chun-Yin Yau grew up in Fresno, California.^[1][2]

He received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.^[1] He graduated in 2007 with a Master of Science and in 2013 with a PhD in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles.^[1][3][4]

His dissertation was titled "An Online Tool for Personal Data Collection and Exploration" and focused on self-surveillance techniques.^[2][5] 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.^[6][7]

Yau is known for his blog FlowingData in which he publishes writing and tutorials on information design and analytics, as well as visualizations and data science-related projects created by other professionals.^[3][8][9]

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).^[8][10][11]

Since 2014, Yau has worked at the U.S. Census as a research mathematical statistician.^[5]

• Yau, Nathan (2011). Visualize This (First ed.). John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 9780470944882. OCLC 729943780.
• Yau, Nathan (2013). Data points : visualization that means something (First ed.). John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 9781118462195. OCLC 871319880.