The Elements of Graphing Data

Review is for the 1994 revised edition. Cleveland is referenced all over the place, almost as much as Tufte, so I decided I should read it. After the title, it aims to be the plotting version of Strunk and White. The strongest sections are the criticism and evaluation of charts, e.g., one from Sagan's The Dragon's of Eden, the notorious O-ring chart, etc. Also strong in getting at the root of the visual task a chart is asking a viewer to perform and what techniques assist that process.

Many of the suggestions are a product of the technology available at the time. Much of the practical advice relates to print and fixed media with what I'd consider pretty skimpy amounts of data today, i.e., only in the hundreds of data points at most show more (though most of the charts have barely a dozen data points.) Other advice would seem to be irrelevant when interactive searching, sorting, highlighting, visibility on mouse hover, etc., is available. On the other hand, a techniques like banking to 45 degrees should be even easier in a digital context because of less restriction on aspect ratio and the potential to zoom in and out of a plot. show less

Where Tufte gives you a good high-level view about displaying info through graphics, Cleveland gets into the nuts and bolts of the issue. This work is actually more useful than Tufte's book, as it gives a lot more practical advice on how to organize your graphs to convey the right level of information.