Visual Explanations

"Tufte makes the claim in the introduction to this book that his books approach visual displays of information differently, that this book is about "<i>pictures of verbs</i> the representation of mechanism and motion, of process and dynamics, of causes and effects, of explanation and narrative", while <i>[b:The Visual Display of Quantitative Information|17744|The Visual Display of Quantitative Information|Edward R. Tufte|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1289897171s/17744.jpg|522245]</i> was about <i>pictures of numbers</i>. <br/><br/>However, I found this book to be too similar in content to the other two books I've read by Tufte (the third being <i>[b:Beautiful Evidence|17743|Beautiful Evidence|Edward R. Tufte|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298416225s/17743.jpg|19271]</i>). Many of the examples used here were also used in the other books, so if you've already read <i>The Visual Display of Quantitative Information</i>, you'll probably not get much out of this book. <i>Visual Display</i>'s better, so I'd recommend reading it instead.<br/><br/>Some things I did find in this book are: <br/><spoiler><br/>- The aggregation of data is necessary in many cases to simplify the display, but the choice of where to divide the clumps can distort the perception of the data's meaning. (I know, it's like <i>Egads, Tufte has discovered Gerrymandering!</i> but he gives some concrete examples that explain how the principle can apply to far more than just politics.)<br/>- When data showing a trend are sparse, they can be significantly strengthened by contrasting them with a large amount of data not showing that trend. <br/>_ The principles used to suppress information in conjurors tricks can be reversed to make clear traditional presentations.<br/>- "<i>Small</i> differences [in appearance] allow <i>more</i> differences" (73). Subtlety of presentation makes it easier to convey shades of meaning.<br/>- Making it easy to draw parallels between information on different sections of a page makes it easier to learn from that page, especially if the sections can be compared or contrasted with each other. <br/></spoiler>"