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The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd Ed. 2nd Edition
Purchase options and add-ons
- ISBN-109780961392147
- ISBN-13978-0961392147
- Edition2nd
- PublisherGraphics Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 14, 1997
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions11 x 9 x 1 inches
- Print length197 pages
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Product details
- ASIN : 0961392142
- Publisher : Graphics Pr; 2nd edition (January 14, 1997)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 197 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780961392147
- ISBN-13 : 978-0961392147
- Item Weight : 2.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 11 x 9 x 1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #12,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Mathematical Analysis (Books)
- #9 in Statistics (Books)
- #10 in Probability & Statistics (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Statistician/visualizer/artist Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University. He wrote, designed, and self-published 5 classic books on data visualization.
The New York Times described Tufte as the "Leonardo da Vinci of data," and Bloomberg as the "Galileo of graphics."
Having completed his book Seeing With Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth, ET is now constructing a 234-acre tree farm and sculpture park in northwest Connecticut, which will show his artworks and remain open space in perpetuity.
He founded Graphics Press, ET Modern Gallery/Studio, and Hogpen Hill Farms.
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As each chapter went on I became even more interested in the material that was presented as it seemed very logical and intuitive. I especially enjoyed Professor Tufte's guidelines on maximizing the "data-ink" and minimizing "non data-ink", and was amazed at how he applied these guidelines to graphs I have been using and teaching for many years, making them seem simpler and not as cluttered even if he suggested the "unthinkable" by leaving out gridlines or piece of the axes.
I must admit that I am a bit skeptical about leaving out grid-lines when I produce graphs in excel but I appreciate that making them lighter really helps to de-clutter a graph. But I was totally blown away by how he simplified box and whisker diagrams into quartile plots and how he even removed portions of the vertical and horizontal axis making the graphs easier to read and somewhat more informative.
I'd love to teach these principle to my students (I'm a private tutor) but I know that their in-school teachers would not allow their use as the syllabuses are somewhat antiquated (as are some of the teachers, their beliefs, and methods). They'd probably lose their minds about what Professor Tufte says about pie charts :-D, which, by the way is not to use them as there are better ways to present data. "The only thing worse than one pie chart is more pie charts".
All in all, as someone who's not from a design or art background and with a bit of a background in maths I thoroughly enjoyed this book, its principles, insights, and suggestions, and though it may not be everyone's cup of tea I would readily suggest it to anyone who has more than a passing interest in graphics especially if they're presenting quantitative data. The principles are logical and intuitive, and I really do think that the presentation of graphics should (like anything) be taught well (eschew the decorations/ducks!)
This book is invaluable and has awakened my thirst for more knowledge.
I'm looking forward to reading more!
Simply and confidently Tufte lays out the basics of the right and the wrong, the good and the bad (and occasionally ugly) regarding graphical depictions of data and information.
This book (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition )is the first and the foundation of four books by Tufte (I. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition. II. Envisioning Information. III. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. IV. Beautiful Evidence.) that should be read in the order of publication. You will be a wiser person for the effort.
His short book, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within", while not part of the "four volume set" is a withering attack on the ubiquitous software program, an attack based on the fact that it encourages the user to break nearly every principle that Tufte has spent the last 20 years elucidating in his books regarding the reading and the writing and presentation of well thought out and presented arguments and reports. I've read it and was convinced; PP constrains complex thought, argument, and statistical (indeed any form of) reasoning with its "bullet points", and is a very inefficient means of depicting information as well, cluttering the display space with useless clip art, huge fonts, and often misleading cookie-cutter graphs. (His satirical PP presentation of the Gettysburg Address humorously makes his points, while his analysis of a very real NASA PowerPoint slide from the decision-making meetings regarding the danger to the Space Shuttle Columbia before its destruction on re-entry makes his points in a very sobering manner.)
All this being said, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a Great Book. In the internet age we all spend many hours per week looking at visual depictions of information. Tufte's book will make you a more critical user of nearly everything, from the newspaper, to websites, to work presentations, the sports pages, and even your car's speedometer and other gauges. It is the foundation to all of his published work from the last two decades.
Buy this book!
The book is wonderful as a selective romp through a history of graphics, and is correct in constantly hammering home the point that clarity in graphics is key, and that the ratio of data-ink to non-data-ink should be high (an interesting measure).
But significant parts of the book simply come across as eccentric, at best.
Tufte advocates data on a world map that nearly stretches around the world twice (p99) -- a little overlap is useful, but this goes far overboard.
He makes truly bizarre suggestions on using barely-visible line "offsets" and barely visible line-gaps to express quartile data (p124). I can barely make out the key information on his perfectly printed page, and can guarantee that any reproduction either by overhead projector or by Xerox would render his "preferred form" utterly useless. This section alone makes me question his judgment throughout the rest of the book.
And then his section on sparklines (pp 172-174) seems to be a jarring bit of self-promotion. He extolls their virtues, but I don't recall ever coming across them in print or on the web -- they just don't seem useful enough to warrant three enthusiastic pages in this book.
In sum, I'd say the main value in this book is as a beautiful compendium of varied graphical examples throughout history. In contrast, Tufte's analysis and recommendations seem overly wordy and at times misguided. I was honestly surprised -- from such a famous book, I was truly expecting more.



















