Oliver Byrne's edition of Euclid

Doesn't Tufte in fact use Byrne's graphic proof of the Pythagorean Theorem in one his books? If I were at home I could check, but I think it's in Visual Explanations.

It looks beautiful but the font is awkward to read. In particular "s" looks like an "f".

Thanks for that link, can't wait to read this!

Thanks for the link. The first thing I thought when I clicked through was if I could find a copy of this book :D

I just bought this for Erin, and it arrived today. It is indeed impressive looking. I didn't realize it was going to come in a box set.

Annoyingly the web preview is in color, but the PDF download is black and white only.

Actually, on closer inspection the download is missing many of the larger diagrams completely for some reason, while others are rendered without color.

If you compare Byrne's version side-by-side with another (as Tufte does in Envisioning Information) then I think you'll agree that it's much easier to follow.

Agreed. Having worked through Euclid with letters (in class, often out loud, mind you, so that may skew my imagination here) I really cannot imagine that colors enhance the process at all. I wouldn't be against colors in addition to letters, but colors alone, despite the superficial aesthetic appeal, seems nutty.

I've been tutoring Euclid to a Gr. 6 student. I gave him both the Heath and Byrne editions to work from but he has a much easier time with the Byrne, primarily because the proofs appear much shorter. The coloured pictures strip out an entire layer of pointer dereferencing.