Edward R. Tufte

Edward Tufte’s books on data visualization are nothing short of legend among us information geeks. A political scientist by training, he demonstrates how well-conceived visualizations can effectively communicate insights and how shortcomings can create catastrophes. He continues his famous series on visual imagination with this book on the intersection of data and art. He shows how displays of evidence can move readers much like art and how poorly constructed displays can inhibit good show more judgment.

Tufte’s highly intellectual writing style remains constant across this series. He notices nuance in illustrations that few others would highlight, but then balloons these observed nuances into foundational insights that can transform the way we communicate data. For instance, he shows how NASA might have prevented the 2006 Challenger disaster were the updates placed into a technical report instead of a slide format.

This book focuses on other items about the fundamentals of information visualization: “sparklines” to communicate trends, how to show causality and to avoid showing it when it’s not implied, and how to map and not to map insights on illustrations. Personally, I tend to have a tough time translating visuals into words, but reading works like Tufte’s increases my skills dramatically. He makes me think hard about how I communicate my scientific findings. His work is not restricted to science only, though, but encompasses most data-driven fields. Such breadth makes for a fun read that engages the imagination.

I wish that every serious professional who relies on communicating information would read a book (or several!) of Tufte’s to enhance their presentation skills. He’s simply on his own level. I have read other experts in the field, but Tufte’s thoughtfulness surpasses. We live in an age where information is abundant – perhaps too abundant. Books like this one help us filter data’s noise so that we can communicate more effectively… and more beautifully. show less

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” so the saying goes. Thus, an effective visualization, enriched by information, must count for so much more. But a misconstrued visualization, unfortunately, can lead to horrific outcomes from misinterpretations. How can we refine our visual thinking so that we can infer correct deductions while ignoring misplaced sketches? Visualization guru Edward Tufte teaches us how to reason about our world through informative displays in this helpful guide, show more replete with engaging prose, topics, and images. He instructs designers and readers of visualizations (which includes almost everyone today!) how to hone their interpretive crafts.

Tufte is the all-time great in the art of visualization. Alongside graphical skill, he brings a love of intellectual history and art history to make readers’ minds spin. Even though his original field was political science, his interests span every form of scientific knowledge garnered by humans throughout the centuries. Therefore, even 25+ years later, the weight of his words surpasses the judgments of everyone else in the field.

This specific book addresses how to interpret complex images (“visual explanations”) to help everyday life and professional work. He harkens to great intellectual discoveries like the rings of Saturn and the wave nature of light to illustrate foundational principles of information visualization. Although his insights about the computer have become dated because of the quickly evolving technology, his philosophy has stood the test of almost three decades of time. In fact, in an era of big data, his wisdom about interpreting complex displays pertains more, not less, to today, and his principles likewise become more prescient.

Visual Explanations contains chapters on topics like: magic (the ultimate form of graphical deception), micro/macro effects, “visual confections” (a series of images to tell a complex story), parallel displays, and statistics in visuals. His thoroughness in his entire series of four visualization books will stand for generations as the classic works in the field. After reading them, all practitioners need do is to spruce up on recent technological developments in display.

Obviously, those involved in the production of visualizations will glean the most from this book. Those in scientific discourse will benefit the most, but those in communication fields will also benefit from being able to mentally clean up others’ mistakes. With computing’s advance, visualizations increasingly convey key parts of life to the general public, so interpretive literacy has become key to the general reader. Business folks, who might be slightly put off by the scientific nature of the content, will nonetheless find many pearls of wisdom to take home. Each of Tufte’s works distill years, if not decades, of work into less than 200 pages, and his rich insight deserves to be pondered for generations. show less

All the way back to Galileo sharing about Jupiter’s moons, science has relied upon visualizations to communicate its findings. Some things are just better depicted visually instead of through words. In contemporary society, information graphics have played an increasingly larger role as computers quickly translate data into a more accessible format. Newspapers and Internet websites have made them commonplace. Even though this book was written in 1990, before ubiquitous computing, it show more identifies the philosophical and graphical issues in mass presentations. Edward Tufte, the modern academic master of visualization, provides this text to teach us how to think about and make better visualizations.

Like the rest of his books, this work has a strongly artistic bent. Most of the visualizations involve some craftsmanship from a visual artist. In 1990, computer graphics, especially of massive datasets, were primitive compared to today. Still, the principles for what looks good – i.e., what communicates – remain constant. This book seeks to teach us how to read graphs by using those principles and how to communicate by incorporating those principles in our own graphs.

I’ve read a lot of books about visualizations, and Tufte is as good as it gets. This book is an appropriate introduction to reading and making graphs. Graphical interpretation of data is a mainstay of almost every academic field these days. While religions have been often rooted in the visual arts, modern scientific explorations have combined the artistry with data. These days, it’s hard to navigate a train station or a car trip without some sort of visualization. This book teaches us how to do so more effectively and how to leverage those insights to lead others more effectively. Anyone interested in better visual communication can benefit from books like this. show less

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is an absolute classic on the creation and use of graphs. Done correctly, a good graph can make complex information instantly comprehensible, reveal relationships and patterns, and both delight and inform. Done poorly, a bad graph causes eyestrain, confusion, and the deliberate obfuscation of the truth. And in a world where graphs are ordinary, Tufte provides a quick history of how they came to be, and the cognitive leaps required.

Tufte rails show more against the sins of bad graphics: scaling and axes that lie about trends in the data; the use of unnecessary ink to convey redundant information; visual clutter and bad aesthetics. He advocates for a kind of elegant minimalism, conveying the most information with a few well-chosen lines of varying weights, and cleverly using edges and white space to mark boundaries, while supporting information with text. The advice is for a pre-computer graphics era (at least in my signed 1983 edition), but the aesthetics still hold, even if we aren't drawing graphs with a marker and straight-edge.

The problem is that Tufte turned out to be a voice crying in the wilderness. There are the majors flaws, like the use of flashy cluttered "infographics" that combine the worst features of text-heavy articles and data graphics. But then there is the minor things. I have at my fingertips about a half-dozen data visualizations packages, from Excel (boo!) to ggplot and bokeh. And not a single one, by default, does everything that Tufte says. They get close, but the defaults are not quite minimalist enough. And truly great graphs, like Minard's plot of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, with his army vanishing into the snows, still require an artist's touch. show less