Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

Tufte, Edward R.

ISBN 10: 0961392126 / ISBN 13: 9780961392123

Published by Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT, 1997

About this Item

2nd printing, with revisions. Hard cover 4to in beige cloth w/red spine titles. Fine and unmarked book in Fine DJ. 156pp inc. Index; well-illustrated in b/w and color throughout. Publisher's promo lit. LAID-IN. Seller Inventory # 044313

Bibliographic Details

Title: Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, ...

Publisher: Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Cloth

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Edition: 1st Edition.

Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis:

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.

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.