Edward Tufte

Meaning
Space
Data
Truth

This book celebrates escapes from flatland, rendering several hundred superb displays of complex data. Revealed here are design strategies for enhancing the dimensionality and density of portrayals of information—techniques exemplified in maps, the manuscripts of Galileo, timetables, notation describing dance movements, aerial photographs, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, electrocardiograms, drawings of Calder and Klee, computer visualizations, and a textbook of Euclid's geometry.

Our investigation yields general principles that have specific visual consequences, governing the design, editing, analysis, and critique of data representations. These principles help to identify and to explain design excellence—why some displays are better than others.

ImageQuilts allows you to make "quilts" from images on your computer or anywhere on the web.

In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall. For many years, overhead projectors lit up transparencies, and slide projectors showed high-resolution 35mm slides. Now "slideware" computer programs for presentations are nearly everywhere. Early in the 21st century, several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint were turning out trillions of slides each year.

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?

Problem statements / Truthful reports / Explaining cause and effect is highest form of knowledge / Nonfiction reports and presentations: fundamentals / Show information that is relevant, credible, honest / No cherry-picking, no lemon-dropping, no confirmation bias / Context and comparisons essential / Presenters and their audience / Efficiency in communication / Credibility and truth in presentations: the necessity of skepticism / High quality measurement and research design are a necessity for truth and presenter credibility / Effectiveness of approximate measurements and models / Real-time 2D/3D images and data analysis heart surgery; exemplary interface for data visualization, machine learning, imaging / Case study: authentic representation of data and uncertainties in real science / Data and measurements: audits and detective work essential / Survival bias / Signal and noise / Color scales as signal and noise / Pitching and hyping corrupts signal / Poshlust = pretentious banality / 20 case studies / Apple decision meetings / Amazon and AWS meetings begin with 30 minute silent reading of a 6-page document (ET invention): the key goal is to seek the truth, ideas not presenters matter most / News story: Why is the Potomac so dangerous? / Doctor patient communication / Important decisions in senior faculty meetings / Teaching is not reading slides aloud to students / Remodeling teaching / Engineering by PowerPoint: Columbia shuttle accident, close readings reveal problems with evidence and conclusions

In doing creative work, do not start your day with addictive time-vampires such as The New York Times, email, and Twitter. All scatter the eye, and mind, produce diverting vague anxiety, clutter short-term memory. Instead, begin with your work. Many creative workers have independently discovered this principle.