If you're using a computer to generate charts for meetings and reports, you don't have to be taught how to lie-you're already doing it. You probably don't know your charts are unreliable, and neither does your audience. So you're getting away with it-until a manager or a sales prospect or an investor makes a bad decision based on the information that you were so helpful to provide. The main focus of How to Lie with Charts is on the principles of persuasive-and undistorted-visual communication. It's about careful thinking and clear expression. So don't blame the computers. People are running the show.
When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher approached me and asked with a sly grin, "You interested in mining?"
I told him absolutely not. I was going to be a writer.
Little did I suspect that he wanted to send me to a student conference on metallurgy where I could seek the fellowship of like-minded teens on a minimally supervised road-trip to the Big City.
Undeterred by my abrupt negative response, he grumbled, "Well, you're interested in mining your own business, aren't you?"
And he sent me anyway.
Now I realize I should've listened more carefully to everything he said.
Gerald Everett Jones holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the College of Letters, Wesleyan University. Author of more than 25 nonfiction books on business and technical subjects, as well as being an award-winning screenwriter, he is a member of the Writers Guild of America (IWC), Dramatists Guild, and the Independent Writers of Southern California. His "How to Lie with Charts" has become something of a classic on the subject of presentation design, with new translations published recently in Chinese and Italian. His books on digital movie production techniques, coauthored with director Peter Shaner, have been among the first to teach the Hollywood-style film-look approach to low-budget digital video.
