Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

Like its predecessors, Visual Explanations is both intellectually stimulating and beautiful to behold. Tufte, a self-publisher, takes extraordinary pains with design and production. The book ranges through a variety of topics, including the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (which could have been prevented, Tufte argues, by better information display on the part of the rocket's engineers), magic tricks, a cholera epidemic in 19th-century London, and the principle of using "the smallest effective difference" to display distinctions in data. Throughout, Tufte presents ideas with crystalline clarity and illustrates them in exquisitely rendered samples.

Product Description
Describes design strategies - the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers - for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause, and effect. Examines the logic of depicting quantitative evidence.

I own all three volumes. I use VISUAL EXPLANATIONS: IMAGES AND QUANTITIES, EVIDENCE AND NARRATIVE when I teach statistics. Students, but mostly professors, are too caught up with the power of inferential statistics leaving behind or seeing the visual display of data as insignificant or too simple to be introduced in a college course. Even worse, some are just plain ignorant regarding data presentation. To dispel any attitude that inferential statistics are the heart and soul of the study of cause, I use the section about the Challenger space flight to illustrate the importance of graphic illustrations in the field of engineering. The book hits home like no other visual presentation. Students see how decisions are made on the basis of poor quality and high quality graphics. These graphics produce a rare quietness in the classroom. There emerges a respect for the deceased astronauts. Students see how decision-makers employ graphic illustrations to determine a critical (in this case, life-threatening) course of action. The illustrations played an important function in endorsing the liftoff of the doomed Challenger.

After students emotionally recover from the trauma of visually understanding the flaw in the O-rings, the graphics lead students to understand the statistical concept of "independence." This statistical concept is initially difficult for undergraduates to grasp. However, the illustrations in VISUAL EXPLANATIONS provide a powerful springboard.

On the lighter side, I insist that students turn to page 90-91 to review the graphic that establishes the cause and effect of "rock `n roll." It, like all of Tufte's illustrations, is inspiring.

Every professor who teaches statistics should have a copy of this and Tufte's other volume entitled, THE VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION. In addition, every academic library should house all the volumes.


everything important about Web design in four pages   August 2, 1998
Philip Greenspun (Cambridge, MA USA)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful

Tufte manages to get everything important about Web design onto pages 146 through 149 of this book: let the information become the interface, use text rather than icons, don't let the Web site mimic the bureaucratic structure of the publisher. The most remarkable thing is that he wasn't even writing about the Web!


Readers Delight   July 11, 2000
Thomas Schultz (Aarhus, Denmark)
46 out of 48 found this review helpful

Oh my - Mr. Tufte just carries on producing one fine piece of work after another.

This third book in the triology on "information presentation" is as splendid as the previous two books. In this volume the emphasis is, as the title suggests, on methods for creating powerful illustrations and graphics that could help you present your knowledge in a non-disputable way.

The most intriguing section in this book without doubt the chapter on the Challenger disaster in 1986. The rocket engineers back then had worries about the launch on Jan 28. However they were not at all able to communicate their worries to NASA and so it ended... In a worrying few number of pages, Mr. Tufte, dissects the data presented to NASA by the engineers and creates a information redesign which makes it clear to anyone that the launch should have been postponed.

I still belive that book 2, "Envisioning Information" is the most required. Buy that book and if you love is (as I do), then buy the other two books as well.

The layout of this book is fully in thread with the others in the series. Beautiful, engaging, ingenious, etc. The print quality is second to none - you really have a feeling that the crew behind these books have been nursing their babies.

So Mr. Tufte - where is number four in the series?


Indispensable and Revealing Insights   July 30, 2003
loce_the_wizard (Lilburn, GA USA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Edward R. Tufte again raises the bar both on his scholarly treatment of how we portray visual information and on how books of value ought to me made.

His third book on information design, Visual Explanation: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative is, in his words, "about pictures of verbs, the representation of mechanism and motion, process and dynamics, causes and effects, explanation and narrative."

Within this book, Mr. Tufte first tackles tough, fundamental issues related to quantity, scale, and magnitude. Determining if a visual representation is honest or accurate may, at first, not seem a vital skill, but Mr. Tufte clearly shows how data and information can be distorted or manipulated and offers sharp observations to help one see more clearly what is presented.

He addresses methods of presenting and analyzing data, using the now classic medical investigative work of John Snow and the fatal flawed decision making that resulting in the Challenger tragedy, to build a steady, compelling argument that there are right and wrong ways to show data.

A chapter on magic and designing disinformation is full of anecdotes, examples, and illustrations about the how's and why's of masking content and diverting attention.

Perhaps my favorite chapter is The Smallest Effective Difference, a challenging but insightful primer on using subtle but effective visual distinctions to create compelling visual information.

The long chapter about visual parallelism treats a complex subject by offering a plethora of examples, all explained with a terse elegance. Students of typography will take a special interest in Mr. Tufte's treatment of letterforms.

How we use and react to multiple images and how to effectively use multiples to evoke repetition, change, pattern, and surprise form the basis of the next chapter. Mr. Tufte again reminds readers that good design must take into account how, when, and even where information will be used.

The final chapter covers what Mr. Tufte has termed visual confections, that is an assembly of myriad visual events to convey a story, make comparisons, merge the real and imaginary. Digital artists should switch off their Macintosh computers until they have studied carefully this chapter, replete with superb illustrations and laser-intense commentary.

Mr. Tufte self-publishes his books because no commercial press would indulge his demands for perfection. His books are wonderful not just because of the information he presents but also because they represent the craft of bookmaking. The printing, binding, the acid-free paper, inks, the arrangement of words and images---these books are to treasure when so much is disposable and fleeting.


Ultimately it's about truth-telling   February 8, 1999
Peekay
21 out of 21 found this review helpful

In the spring of 1998, I participated in a semester-long class taught by Edward Tufte.

The subject was information design and his three books, Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, were the core reading materials of the seminar.

Had I only read the books and not participated in the class, I might have missed some underlying core themes that Tufte conveyed through his passionate presentation of the material.

Beyond just putting the right mark on a piece of paper or on a computer screen, these books are about truth-telling, about removing all impediments to understanding between the communicator and the receiver, and about being selfless in one's representation of the truth.

Similar books just catalog graphical techniques. Tufte's books will leave most readers with an indelible sense of obligation to communicate transparently, selflessly and truthfully.