Beautiful Evidence

by Edward R. Tufte

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

302.23

Genres

Collection

Don

Publication

Graphics Press (2006), Edition: 1st edition, 213 pages

Description

Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information. Beautiful Evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how empirical observations turn into explanations and evidence presentations. The book identifies excellent and effective methods for presenting information, suggests new designs, and provides tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations. Here we will see many close readings of serious evidence presentations - ranging through evolutionary trees and rocket science to economics, art history, and sculpture. Insistent application of the principles of analytical thinking helps both insiders and outsiders assess the credibility of evidence.

Media reviews

The Rabbit Hole

— 2 more

Yuri Engelhardt

NPR

User reviews

LibraryThing member jbushnell

A masterpiece of beautiful design, but content-wise this book feels a bit like a "Tufte's Greatest Hits" collection. The Powerpoint-hatin' and the appreciation of Minard's "Napoleon marches on Moscow" graphic, for instance, will seem familiar to readers of Tufte's other books. (That's not to say

that there isn't a pleasant sort of comfort to encountering them again here.) Of the chapters that felt really fresh, the one on "sparklines" is key: it's the one that best showcases Tufte's endless willngness to fruitfully rethink the ways that we visualize data.

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LibraryThing member hcubic

The first of this series of books by Edward Tufte, "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" was the one that, in my opinion, would be of most practical use to the average scientist. That was six volumes and twenty four years ago. I would recommend the most recent one, "Beautiful

Information", as a logical continuation. In it, he provides ideas for annotating and enhancing information in photographs, the use of "sparklines" to highlight tabular data, the use of links and causal arrows, the proper combination of numbers and images, a reprise of the principles of the first volume in a chapter entitled "The Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design", and a criticism of substandard arguments and faulty presentations in "Corruption in Evidence Presentations: Effects without Causes, Cherry-Picking, Overreaching, Chartjunk, and the Rage to Conclude". This is a beautiful book (as are all of the others) with high-quality color reproductions of inventive and economical depictions of data and concepts. Tufte has himself quite a racket. He publishes his own books (Graphics Press LLC) which he sells at relatively high prices (but justified by their production values). These provide grist for his relatively expensive seminars for graphic designers. If you can't get to (or afford) one of his design seminars, you can profit by his books. Also, be sure to visit the lively online forums linked from his Web site.

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LibraryThing member craigim

Tufte's first three books on information design each took on a different kind of data (in his words, 'numbers', 'nouns', and 'verbs', or 1-D statistical data, 2-D correlations and diagrams, and 3-D data and time series). In beautiful evidence, Tufte takes a step back and picks several case studies,

some from his other books, some brand new, to take an in depth look at how the presentation design positively or negatively effects how information is conveyed. Most notable is his detailed takedown of Boeing and NASA's use of Power Point to convey complex engineering studies, obfuscating the dangers imposed by falling debris from the space shuttle fuel tank that lead to the destruction of Columbia upon re-entry. He examines how information presentations succeed, how they fail, and how they can be made better. It is a fitting prologue to the series.

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LibraryThing member gbsallery

Possibly just a fraction less focused than his previous works, but also taking a wider-ranging and more aesthetically driven view of the practice of presenting information. The book certainly satisfies the expectation created by the title; it is indeed beautiful. PowerPoint users beware.

LibraryThing member themulhern

It is just possible that if I can't understand it, it is poorly written. The diatribe against the abuse of bullet points in PowerPoint presentations, however, is funny and must be right.

LibraryThing member encephalical

A book that rewards close reading.

LibraryThing member markm2315

The fourth of Tufte's series of books on the visual display of information. It is the most eccentric of the series and includes a moderate amount of recycled material from the previous volumes. There is remarkable vitriol in an amount that I think you can only see in a self-published book, with an

illustrated non-anonymized attack on one economics professor's book, and a prolonged attack on Microsoft Powerpoint that refers to Stalin more than once. There are also, of course, many interesting things, e.g. some discussion of Conway's Law. The book ends with a very odd criticism of some works of landscape architecture, and then photographs of some of the author's sculptures.

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