

Edward Tufte, Information Sage - TobiasCassell
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/the_information_sage029137.php#

======
duopixel
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.

~~~
ChuckFrank
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...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/25/opinion/20080825-ballot.html)

------
ben1040
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.

------
bane
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.

~~~
andrewcooke
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.

------
dpatru
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._

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

