Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty through Graphical Display

Howard Wainer

ISBN 10: 0691137595 / ISBN 13: 9780691137599

Published by Princeton University Press, 2009

About this Item

Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Seller Inventory # G0691137595I3N01

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty through Graphical Display
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691137595
• ISBN 13: 9780691137599
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 1.53 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

In his entertaining and informative book Graphic Discovery, Howard Wainer unlocked the power of graphical display to make complex problems clear. Now he's back with Picturing the Uncertain World, a book that explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world.

Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs.

We live in a world full of uncertainty, yet it is within our grasp to take its measure. Read Picturing the Uncertain World and learn how.

About the Author

Howard Wainer is distinguished research scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners and adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His many books include Graphic Discovery (Princeton).