Learn the life-or-death value of visual explanations
Third of the series of Tufte's brilliantly-done graphic design and quantitative analysis guides, this one focuses on images that provide "Visual Explanations." These images can show quantities, least significant differences, parallels, and explanations in ways that enhance and exceed text or numerical table data.
As usual, the book is lavishly illustrated with examples painstakingly reproduced and clearly printed on high-quality paper. Tufte's books feel and look classic and classy. They are a delight to any reader who loves books as objects. In short, Tufte follows his own rules in his books.
He devotes the lengthiest chapter of the book to a positive and a negative example of why clear visual explanations are so important, indeed life-or-death. His positive example is John Snow's map of London showing the location of deaths in the last great outbreak of cholera in that city in 1854. This map, visually displaying the evidence he gained from interviews, reviews of medical records, and meetings with city government leaders, helped Snow pinpoint the probable source of the cholera, and saved many lives--how many is still an open and unsolvable question which Tufte examines by showing some refactoring of Snow's visual explanations. You can read more about this amazing man Snow and his triumph in The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson.
The negative example is the US Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, where hastily assembled tabular data and visual explanations by the engineers who designed the rockets was unable to stop the launch at the last moment. As Tufte clearly shows, pulling from that tabular and visual data, plus others presented during the follow-up hearings, better visual explanations would have illuminated the causal relationship between air temperature and O-ring failure, caused that cold-morning launch to be delayed for warmer weather, and saved the lives of the seven astronauts on the Challenger.
In sum, it is a joy to learn the value of visual explanation from Tufte's books.
Great book
First time I read the book I thought it is waste of money but after analyzing it further I believe that this is one of rarest book that is solely based on application rather then theory. I can relate day to day application with examples specified in book. this has also helped me to gain praises from my boss at work.
P.S: This book is not a novel/story-bookyou need to spend some time thinking also.
another great book by Tufte on graphs
In this third book by Tufte on graphics, he provides great examples through history where good pictures conveyed important information to decision makers and bad graphics left uncetainty and indecision. A great success story is the identification of the source of the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s. With regard to the Challenger Space Shuttle, Tufte suggests that one good picture may have convinced the NASA engineers of the need to avoid launching at low temperatures. Great pictures, great examples and great advice are found throughout the book. You may not believe that graphs can be used to answer all scientific questions but Tufte will convince you that they are important and must be done right!
Many good examples of illustrations
Many excellent examples on conveying many types of quantitative data across a wide variety of subjects. The only problem is that, to create most of these, one must be a graphic artist. If one needs to convey highly technical quantitative information, especially to layman, this gives the reader a good idea/perspective of how to explain to graphic artists hired along what general lines an illustration should be made.
What a gem - but not your first design book
Tufte's series on visualization will surely go down as classics. He's readable, he's right, and he's engaging.
The only thing is, as pretty and as well-founded the book is in certain principles, it's my opinion that... that the average reader doesn't understand design problems enough that this book will present anything new.
Meaning, the book is so intuitive, that, it seems pointless anyone would ever have to write a beautiful book like this -- *UNLESS* you have been stymied over and over again by mudglobs of creative ad hoc-kery and ad-hoc functionality, or, if you have been victimized by the unfunctional sheen of superglossy animated 3-d search engines (data visualizations, etc).
Here's maybe the test -- if the price tag of this book seems excessive, you haven't been slogging through enough terrible textbooks to see what a light and airy gem of fresh... >sigh< air this book is.
Otherwise - buy the Tufte series all at once, and see if you can't save bucks on the group discount.
(37 reviews)
