Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions [Paperback]

Edward R. Tufte (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: Graphics Pr (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961392134
• ISBN-13: 978-0961392130
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Arts & Photography > Graphic Design > Commercial > General
  • #26 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Business & Investing > General
  • #28 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Science > General

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

481 of 483 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Section of Visual Explanations, March 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions (Paperback)

Just a note that this is a reprint of Chapter 2 of Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, just so Tufte fans aren't thinking they're getting something not seen before.

(Space shuttle and cholera epidemic examples.)

165 of 166 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great way to get started on Tufte, August 2, 2000

By 

Steve Frazier (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions (Paperback)

Edward Tufte has written 3 big, justifiably famous and well liked books. They're also beautiful and expensive. This is really a booklet, a reprint of a chapter of one of his books, and is a great way to get started on the way he thinks. It explores how graphics were used to track down the source of a cholera epidemic in London -- and how bad chart-making and graphics could have led to the wrong conclusion. The second example in this excerpt explores the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. In this absorbing example, Tufte takes the 13 pages of (badly organized) data that the engineers debated on the night before the space shuttle was scheduled to blast off. Tufte first tears apart the charts, and demonstrates why even though the engineers reached the right conclusion (don't launch), why the data was presented so badly that NASA overruled them (resulting in the Challenger explosion). Then, Tufte rearranges the same data into a couple of clear graphic displays that demonstrate they clearly had enough data to demonstrate that the launch of the Challenger was clearly occurring at grave risk. A great example of clear thinking at work.

OK, so maybe great graphics won't save the world. But this is a good, well priced introduction into Tufte's line of thinking. If you think you might like his stuff, buy this; get hooked; buy the big books.

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: this is a chapter of a book you may already have., July 18, 2000

By 

Bette Noire - See all my reviews

This review is from: Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions (Paperback)

Rather than a new work, this is actually Chapter 2 of "Visual Explanations, Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative," and I wish it had been represented as such on the cover. The graphics are his least inspiring. Nevertheless, anything by Edward R. Tufte is bound to be brilliant, so I give this one five stars. As for his other books, there aren't enough stars. My favorite: "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information."