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Summary: You will NEVER look at newspaper graph in the same way again
Review: The single three dimensional (on flat paper) graph of Napolleon's march to Moscow is worth the $40.00 price alone.
A framed copy hangs on my office wall. The book is stunning
in it's clearity of ideas.There are concise examples of
the casual deceptions of graphs in newspapers and magazines.
Read the Book it will improve the way you visualize data forever.
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Summary: Excellent reference on graphical representation of data
Review: This book is an excellent style guide on how to present data in graphical format. Every idea is clearly explained and backed up with excellent visual examples. Tufte emphasizes the use of graphics as a tool that accelerates the flow of information to the reader instead of an ornamental attachment. Latest advances in personal
computing and world-wide web has made this point even
more important - just think about the amount of junk we get to see on a typical web page. Tufte criticizes the increasingly familiar case of graphical data distortion in publications with striking examples and offers basic
guidelines for avoiding this problem. The book is overall very well written and designed. I consider "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"
required reading for anybody who needs to present or use data in graphical form.
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Summary: Good but dull
Review: Good graphics but not cutting edge
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Summary: Excellent book, reoriented my thinking.
Review: I've been working in marketing research for over 20 years and am constantly challenged to present complex information to managers -- quickly, efficiently, accurately, ...and visually.
This book completely reoriented my approach to this task, and ranks among maybe half a dozen that have had such an influence on my worldview. My graphs now communicate huge amounts of information very simply. Managers can "get it" within a few minutes at most. I write less text because I can convey so much visually. My reports are shorter, more concise, more reader friendly, and my value to clients has gone up.
Others in my company come to me to review their graphs too, and I can almost always find something to recommend, based on Tufte's principles.
This book is well written and illustrated. It seems nothing was spared to make it useful and visually appealing. It is well worth the investment.
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Summary: You'll Never Make a Chart the Same Way Again
Review: Edward Tufte is a prophet of the Information Age come to warn us that we must repent or be consigned to oblivion. One of the great advances which has made the Information Age possible has been the development of easy-to-use graphing software to swiftly create charts which used to take skilled draftsmen days to produce. Unfortunately, the commoditization and automation of this once-dear skill set has resulted in the proliferation of lies, damned lies, and lousy statistics. Tufte, a Princeton professor and polymath with passionate interest in statistics, information design, and public policy, offers up a thorough diagnosis of what ails our data-rich, information poor society: - Poor graphical integrity, where the visual proportions are out of synch with the data's proportions - Chartjunk, unnecessary clutter which reduces the proportion of data-ink in a graphic - Poor labeling, which robs data of context - Low-density presentations, where complex and nuanced data are "dumbed down" for the sake of a fleeting aesthetic Fear not---Dr. Tufte also provides the reader with a course of treatment (called "Graphical Excellence") thoroughly illuminated with real-world examples drawn throughout history. This is one of those rare works which feeds both your right and left brain. It is a closely-argued work on behalf of clean and clear communications. It is also a wonderful art book depicting the evolution of an often-misunderstood art form. Whether you're an engineer, a statistician, a businessman, or a teacher, this beautifully-designed book will help you become a more effective communicator.
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Summary: It Changed My Outlook for Life
Review: Though some of the examples of computer graphics are dated, the principles still resonate. This book was recommended to me in the late 80's and is still the major influence in how I think about presenting data. Tufte writes with quick wit and tremendous examples.
Buy the book in spite of the title - it belongs on every professional's bookcase.
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Summary: Make quantitative information useful for decision making
Review: I have heard this book described as a really good coffee-table book. It's content, while often technical and very much focused on the theory of graphs and diagrams and data and information, very practically demonstrates the impact of how quantitative information is visually presented, and shows many alternatives that are quantum improvements on the originals. It's easy to draw out the principles that Tufte demonstrates, and to apply them to your own work.
The book's examples are drawn from many interesting areas such as the New York State Budget, train schedule graphs, irrigation maps of 1972, heights of college students, the price of crude oil and the thermal conductivity of tungsten. Through these case studies, Tufte makes conscious for the reader the way in which humans read visual information and how poorly the majority of our visual information is designed in respect of this.
It has greatly influenced the work I do in helping people design reports of organisational performance information, how they choose and format charts in particular. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who regularly reports or presents data and information to others to assist their decision making.
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Summary: Excellence in graphical work
Review: If you buy just one of Edward Tufte's three wonderful books on good graphical practice (soon to be four, incidentally: watch out for Beautiful Evidence, expected later this year), then it has to be this one, because it is here that he sets out the principles that underlie all of his later work. It is a book that everyone who uses graphs for displaying information needs to read and read again. Every page contains something of interest and importance, and sometimes something entertaining as well.
So, what are these principles that define a good graphic? First of all, the presentation must be honest. So far as deliberate dishonesty is concerned this is obvious, but often graphical dishonesty results from incompetence rather than bad intentions. A frequent error of this kind is to vary the linear dimensions of little drawings intended to represent the relative magnitudes of different things. It is common, for example, when one quantity has double the magnitude of another to represent this with a drawing that not only has double the length but also double the width of the other, forgetting that this means that it has four times the area. In more elaborate illustrations where the drawings imply three dimensions, i.e. depth as well as length and width, doubling the linear size implies multiplying the volume by eight.
To this point Tufte's arguments are surely uncontroversial, but he goes on to discuss other principles that excellent graphics display and bad ones do not, and here he may part company with some of his readers. He dislikes meaningless decoration -- flourishes intended to make "dry statistics" more interesting. However, as he rightly says, if the statistics are not interesting in the first place one should not be presenting them, and if they are interesting they don't need decoration to make them more so. Another point -- related to this one, but more extended -- is that good graphics maximize what he calls data ink: as far as possible all of the ink used in printing the graphic should be conveying information about the data. Grids, scale measures, frames and so on should be kept to a minimum and should never be allowed to overwhelm the data they are supporting. A good graphic should be clear, but at the same time contain many details that constantly call the attention back.
The book is fairly repetitive, as certain examples recur during the course of reading it. However, this is deliberate, and probably essential. When we see a truly excellent graphic for the first time, such as the summary of New York City's weather in 1980, which appears in Chapter 1, we can see immediately that it is excellent, but it is less evident what makes it excellent. To understand this we need to have the various features explained and contrasted with some of the truly horrible examples that Tufte also provides: the very large quantity of real information contained in a small space, the simultaneous comparison of numerous different variables, the intelligent (and not garish) use of shading, the explanatory labels within the graphic, and so on. Convincing the reader that all this is desirable, and that gratuitous shading, meaningless bright colours, and so on, are not, requires a leisurely pace and some repetition. Many readers simply don't get it even after it has been explained, and the continued frequency of really bad graphics underlines the necessity of Tufte's books.
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Summary: Don't buy it just for you, but for everyone else around you
Review: I finally tracked down a copy of the 2nd edition (thanks interlibrary loan!) just to see if it's as good as most people say, or as bad as some people say. The examples are excellent, the layout is beautiful, and most importantly, Tufte doesn't overestimate the value of the graphics. This seems like an odd statement for a book about the value of graphics, but Tufte recognizes that graphics still need explanations, and he supplies them clearly and accurately.
So for you Amazon buyers: the fact that you're looking for this book shows that you care about making quality graphics, and thus you probably already know many of the rules that Tufte presents. Tufte does have the tendency to get a little maniacal in his desire to "eliminate ink" (c.f. pg. 125); you'd be better off adopting the principle and not the exact practice. And the book is short, so you'll have digested it in a reading or two. It's not like you'll go back again and again. But the biggest reason to get a copy of the book is so that you can lend it to everyone else around you, because there are a great number of people that need this book, but won't come looking for it. My copy's on its way, and I've got a list of students in my technical writing and publishing class that are going to be offered a chance to read it.
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Summary: A Minimalist Opinion
Review: This book reminded me of my college days in that it is an essay advocating one approach to creating graphs and charts. The author has essentially one point he is making--to eliminate or minimize absolutely all ink that you can. Because Tufte takes this to the extreme, I see this book not as a standard how-to guide but as one person's OPINION on how to construct graphs.
While Tufte's mantra can be helpful, I found him to be rather single-minded, to the point that some of what he is doing is degrading, not improving, the graph. For instance, in a line or scatter graph he says we should eliminate parts of the x- and y- axes, in particular the stretch from the 0,0 point to wherever the first bit of data is plotted. I have a problem with this because one of the ways to create deceptive graphs is not to start your origin point at 0,0.
Tufte also writes from the standpoint of the scientific community. His minimalist approach may work very well for scientific and statistical uses, but not all graphs are created for those purposes. Sometimes we create graphs as marketing tools, and Tufte's one-size-fits-all principle just doesn't work here. For instance, a bar chart which shows a potential mutual fund investor that all funds from financial company X had a return of at least 110% or more. According to Tufte having a solid bar is not necessary, we should only make a line and top it off with a horizontal tick mark, producing something like a capital "T" or an upside-down capital "L." But if I'm in marketing I want to emphasize a long, vertical stretch of line because this is symbolic of product the customer may receive if they invest. The customer would notice a solid bar more than a single line.
If you want a practical how-to book, this is probably not for you. Myself, I was happy that I borrowed this book from the library rather than bought it. It's rather simple reading, and the useful points Tufte does bring out are more common sense than anything else. If you still want to read it, it's probably best to do so after reading more basic graph design books.
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