Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative |  | Author: Edward R. Tufte
Publisher: Graphics Press
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
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Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 3852
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 156
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 10.5 x 8.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0961392126
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23
EAN: 9780961392123
Publication Date: February 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
With Visual Explanations, Edward R. Tufte adds a third volume to his indispensable series on information display. The first, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which focuses on charts and graphs that display numerical information, virtually defined the field. The second, Envisioning Information, explores similar territory but with an emphasis on maps and cartography. Visual Explanations centers on dynamic data--information that changes over time. (Tufte has described the three books as being about, respectively, "pictures of numbers, pictures of nouns, and pictures of verbs.") 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
 It's pretty and fun but is it right? February 13, 2010
Bernard M. Patten (Seabrook, TX United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
What's the evidence that what Tufte says is correct? How do we know for sure that his methods for presentation are more effective than those currently favored? How can we be sure that his dictates about ornamentation, chart junk, powerpoint, TV, and so forth are justified? How reasonable is it for a book to rail against lecturers who don't have handouts without a scientific study to prove that a lecture with a handout is more effective than one without a handout? The problem: This book is supposed to be about clear logical thinking in the visual modality, and yet it is full of unsupported statements, many of which are prejudicial and beg the question. Example (page 148) "Too many interfaces for information compilations have uffered from television-disease: thin substance, contempt for audience and the content, short attention span, and over-produced styling." Wow! All this in one sentence. The statement is an over blown generalization that is unlikely to apply to all TV programing all the time although it may apply to some programs some of the time or even most programs most of the time. The trouble is that we are trying to look reasonable and logical, and yet, if any one of Tufte's conjuncts is false, the whole statement is false because P&Q&R&S is true, if and only if, P is true, Q is true, R is true, and S is true. By the way, who has proven that information organized in binary structures, software decision trees, (what he calls) Ding-a-lings design, and so forth is wrong or ineffective? The overwhelming evidence is that they work and that is why billions of dollars are spent on ads with those features. Partial selection of evidence and retrospective analysis also are not exactly scientific. Yes, the O rings did fail and led to the crash and burn. That's a fact. But it is not a fact that the disaster could have been predicted by the correct visual presentation of data. That is a conjecture that would require a great deal of analysis and in the end could not be proven in any scientific sense. Partial selection of evidence is also present in the absurd case of the desperately ill woman (Mrs. K, page 56 of Envisioning Information) who died. Here we have a gigantic hospital bill which seens terrible as the woman did die. The efforts, though, to save her life seems appropriate to me (I hold an MD from Columbia) and if she had survived would have been justified. The fact is that most people do survive infections because modern antibiotics do work. Summary: To me the book was interesting but idiosyncratic. Having gone over it a second time, I found the practical value slight, and the information contend mainly based on method (the author's method) and not necessarily on reality.
 Visual Explanations November 20, 2009
Guy G. Johnson (Minneapolis, MN)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
A wonderful study on presenting data in a visual format.
Edward Tufte is a modern-day master.
A masterpiece of visual communications June 26, 2009
Julio Birman
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Though not part of my curriculum, I still use this book when I teach my Advanced Graphic Design class. The book takes you on a technical journey of how we perceive imagery, basically what constitutes visual and graphical communication. Very powerful tool for advanced visual communicators and advertisers.
A must have February 14, 2009
BH (USA)
Since information is perhaps our new raw material, understanding how to read it, analyze it and display it are crucial skills for designer citizens. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative is one in a series of books by Edward Tufte that advances a theory of visual communication based on substance, precision, logic and truthfulness. Studying the material will change how you think about graphic design and about data.
I am a graduate student in visual communication and I am grateful to Mr. Tufte for so beautifully documenting his research.
 Of little practical value December 2, 2008
Easy Writer
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book was not what I expected, or needed. I was looking for an expert guide on HOW to create clear graphics that communicate ideas, tell a story, and so on. Instead, this book (and all of Tufte's book) have the luxurious, plodding, self-indulgent pace and haughty language of the ivory tower of academia.
Imagine someone wants to learn football. They buy a book that, rather than teaching the three-point stance or how to run a hook pattern, instead shows grainy black and white photos of rugby players and explains that football originated in Wales in 1883. Then it shows pictures of leather helmets and some more grainy shots of the Yale football team from 1920 and so on. Rather than learning HOW to play football, you are taken on a quaint exploration of how football started.
This was my experience reading Tufte's book. I was completely disappointed with his writing style and lack of practical guidance. From the reviews, it appears others have gotten more from the book than I did, because they were willing to spend time pondering Tufte's examples. But for myself, I found Stephen Few's book "Information Dashboard Design" covers the material much more comprehensively and - most important to me - practically than Tufte did.
I'll be returning my Tufte history books for a full refund.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
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