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. 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 Features
- Tan colored hardback with light colored jacket with a visual image as representing weather patterns
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Rewarding to those willing to spend time on it As an extension of his observations described in his earlier book, “Envisioning Information”, Tufte’s third installment of the trilogy turns the discussion to the display of dynamic information. Again, Tufte draws from numerous examples throughout history to illustrate his points. The chapter on ‘Visual and Statistical Thinking’ contains some of the most poignant arguments in the book, including an engaging visual narrative of the 1854 Cholera Epidemic and a study on the Challenger space-shuttle tragedy.
Tufte is an intellectual giant VISUAL EXPLANATIONS: IMAGES AND QUANTITIES, EVIDENCE AND NARRATIVE represents one volume within a set of three. In this volume, Edward R. Tufte explores the visual and artistic aspects of the assessment of change, dynamics and most importantly cause and effect. In my mind, Edward R. Tufte is one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century. His work is magnificent! He employs a powerful conceptual framework that has had a profound effect on the reader.