Edward Tufte, Information Sage | Hacker News Reader

Edward Tufte, Information Sage

washingtonmonthly.com

Edward Tufte does leave a deep impression. I stumbled upon his books in my university's library, about eight years ago, while studying design.

Some years later—while going through files on my old computer— I found a pair of schedules. I'd design these every semester so my friends knew where to find me, since I didn't have a cel phone.

Before Tufte (c1999): http://blog.duopixel.com/images/horario.gif

After Tufte (c2002): http://blog.duopixel.com/images/horario2.gif

If I'd design it now, I'd take a different approach yet again. In the end, good design is neither a nice style or maximizing data-to-ink ratio, it's about making information understandable and pleasurable to use.

Congratulations sir, and thank you for that excellent example. Professor Tufte held a master class while I was at UCLA Design, and his belief that information should be comprehensive, clear and legible, while obvious, still holds for me significant poetic challenges. Being comprehensive is not about simply adding more information. Instead it's about removing unnecessary information so as to prioritize the most relevant information. My favorite example of late is the NYT 2008 ballot redesign. Not only is it clear and legible, but it successfully removes all the unnecessary information to make the remaining information more actionable. --> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/25/opinion/200808...

I was on vacation in SF a few years back and discovered from a sign in my hotel lobby that Tufte was giving a workshop there the very next morning. I immediately signed up.

You'd think it would be really weird to spend $400 to sit in a hotel ballroom for 7 hours while you're on vacation -- but it was well worth it. I had read through some of Dr Tufte's books but it was much easier for me to really integrate and understand the concepts with the detailed explanations and visual displays he presented during the workshop.

If you ever have a chance to go to one of his workshops, I highly recommend it.

Something to keep in mind with Tufte's ideas is that, while he has many wonderful ways of thinking about visualizing data, often it's hard to generalize his concepts into a simple set of general purpose visualizations, suitable for use on a variety of problems. Instead, you find yourself seeking to find a way to display data in as "Tufte" a way as possible, which more of than not means a discrete visualization for every kind of data you have.

This becomes a problem in data visualization software, where the number of data visualizations is far less than the number of possible datasets of interest. So many datasets will tend to map to very few visualizations: bar chart, scatter chart, both with a time series, relatively uncomplex graphs of low connectivity density, etc.

You can see Tufte has this problem himself, with his singular "invention" the sparkline really just being a form of a tiny time series line graph. Which is cool, but it's not particularly earth shattering.

My takeaway has always been to be mindful of Tufte's analysis, but don't be slavish to it unless you can produce a unique visualization for each kind of data.

thanks. that helps explain why many people i know who are vocal fans of his work produce such poor interfaces - there is nothing simple for them to learn from in a constructive way.

For a more stats oriented take on data analysis (and more pragmatically useful, I think), check out Bill Cleveland:

http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~wsc/

Note, yet ANOTHER brilliant guy to come out of Bell Labs.

Interesting quote on PowerPoint:

Tufte dissected NASA’s PowerPoint slides on his Web site, showing that the program didn’t allow engineers to write in scientific notation and replaced complex quantitative measurement with imprecise words like “significant.” He then published a twenty-eight-page essay called “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint,” in which he analyzed hundreds of existing PowerPoint slides and showed that the statistical graphics used in PowerPoint presentations show an average of twelve numbers each, which, in Tufte’s analysis, ranks it below every major world publication except for Pravda. The low information density of PowerPoint is “approaching dementia,” he wrote.

The comments are interesting. Tufte alumni are starting to network.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com