| | The
Visual Display of Quantitative Information,
by Edward R. Tufte.
Since the self-publication of this
first, now classic book by Edward
R. Tufte in 1983, he has produced three more indispensable
critiques/guides to using graphics to better explain data,
ideas, narratives, and other sorts of information. His new
book, Beautiful
Evidence, was just released and is his first book
since 1997's Visual
Explanations (Envisioning
Information is the other book). With the publication
of his new book it seems fitting to look at where it all
began.
For Tufte, the bane of his existence
are statistical representations that pander to the supposedly
dim-witted audiences of newspapers and magazines, representations
that feel the need to "jazz up" their graphs with
pictures and other superfluous information that is layered
over the data, rather than being a part of it. The most
obvious examples can be found on the cover of USA Today,
whose graphs
tend to obscure and distract from the actual data being
presented. In place of this sort of practice, Tufte pushes
graphical excellence and integrity. To explain these rather
broad and vague ideas, he uses examples of good
and bad graphic design to define rather specific traits
of the former, in which he evolves almost a new language
via terms like data-ink and chartjunk.
For those outside the narrow field
of graphically representing data in books, newspapers and
magazines, it might come as a surprise that anything was
wrong with graphs like those in USA Today. But after reading
this first of Tufte's now four books, it's clear that poor
graphs and other representations not only undermine the
intelligence of readers but ultimately lie to them by skewing
exactly what it is being presented in the first place.
. . or . . 
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