Archive for Edward Tufte
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Minard, Tufte, Kosslyn and Godin (and Napoleon)
Do you prefer the full report:
Or the executive summary?
For Tufte’s fans, Minard’s map plays a central role in Tufte’s iconography, and the way he praises it (”best statistical graphic ever”) is quoted endlessly (974 results in Google as of today, to be precise). Tufte discussed The Map in his first book (The Visual Display of [...]
Modern graphical analysis: are we honouring our founding fathers?
Nathan, over the FlowingData blog, points to this video where John Tukey himself discusses the analysis of multivariate data using computers… in 1972. The library contains other great videos, so I encourage you to explore it.
Tukey had an enormous impact in the way we look at the data, but exactly who are “we”? Are [...]
Pie charts: a neverending discussion
We all know how found of pie charts Tufte is:
A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart; the only worse design than a pie chart is several of them, for then the viewer is asked to compare quantities located in spatial disarray both within and between charts (…). Given their low [...]
The “what-would-Tufte-say” syndrome
An alarming level of the “what-would-Tufte-say” syndrome can be found in this post and some of its comments discussing a New York Times’s infographic. This syndrome has some recognizable features like the extensive use of “chart junk”, “lie factor” or other terms and expressions coined by Tufte that reveal a somewhat misunderstanding or abusive [...]
