Note: there is now an official Tufte website.

Edward Tufte: "Presenting Data and Information"

I attended a one-day course given by Edward Tufte on Jan 26, 2000. It ran from 9am to 4:30pm. I have kept notes on both the content itself, methods used in delivery, and his suggested reading list. My notes are in brief shorthand, but at least you can get a flavor of what he was covering.

NOTE: E. Zimmerman took more coherent notes - they are available here in Word format, about 47k. The session referred to in Zimmerman's notes was at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Tufte's presentation for that audience may have been tuned for that research/physics audience.

This notetaking kept me from strangling the clueless, drooling salesdroid moron sitting next to (and on top of) me. His pager was out of control, and his coffee was out of his cup and all over my copy of Minard's map. Unfortunately, this dud did not fall down the escalators on the way to the bathroom, and so continued to take up air that useful persons might otherwise consume.

Attendees received all three of Tufte's books noted below:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte

Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Content

Tufte covered his main design ideas (content is crucial, show multivariate data, etc) and walked through important examples from his three books.

Introduction

Two issues
- Dimensionality: most issues need multivariate data to model them. How to do this on "flatland" paper.
- Resolution: data density, information resolution, transfer rates

Euclid's Geometry

Codes (A=plastic, B=wood) are impediments to learning
get viewer out of the puzzle-solving mode
"Behold!" one-word proof of Pyth. Theorem.
solid geometry examples; pop-ups as brute force method
rag-based paper lasts, Ben Jonson's personal copy
notes belong in the margins "where God intended them to be"

Minard's Napoleon's March to Moscow

Principles

enforce visual comparisons
show causality
use multi-variate data, "high dimensional"
integrate all data, images, typography, #s
Content - do no harm to the content
Where do design principles come from?
Make info adjacent in space, not in time
use "small multiples"

Galileo's Sunspots and visual thinking

good design=clear thinking made visible. Bad design=stupidity made visible.
sequential images on separate pages= "one damned thing after another"
adjacent images (small multiples) better.
user "where am I" shows an attempt to compare current view with some past, forgotten view
Credibility of small multiples: leverage user learning of the image, show mastery of data, show all data

Visual Explanations

framing the presentation: what is the problem; who cares; your solution
PGP - particular - general -particular
newton's book with two color print on title page (pubs name in red)

Finance

regress to the mean; relate anomalies to the overall pattern
micro/macro images allow multilayered views
confirming prior knowledge builds credibility
simple design, lush content rather than over-produced poverty of data
watch for footnotes to show sources

Interfaces, web, kiosks
- suggested urls:
  - www.dogpile.com, for functional rather than layout reasons
    NOTE: I think Tufte fundamentally misunderstands the function of [meta-]search engines.
  - www.excite.com
  - seti@home
    NOTE: Tufte claims seti@home is the world's largest supercomputer. Actually it's distributed.net. jc
  - www.junkbusters.com. Again, I think he means functionally rather than aesthetically.
  - photo.net/photo/ "possibly the best-designed site on the internet"
  - www.iarchitect.com
  - www.amazon.com
  - www.bookfinder.com
  - Arts and Letters Daily
Making serious decisions
- show me causality
- show me the entire data set
- what do I want to see to make this decision?
- (challenger disaster example)
Teaching
- show up early
- no apologies or other 1st person speech for as long as possible
- PGP
- hand out paper
- know what the audience reads
- respect the audience; assume they are your colleagues
- use humor appropriately
- believe it, physically project it. Show your face, body, expressions
- finish early
- practice! use video: fast forwarded, then only audio. no uptalking
- protect voice and body; drink water
- improve your content!

Methods

NLP people will recognize many of these techniques.

consistently pumped products for sale, using humor
ensured that attendees physically handled the books by taking us to various places in the books repeatedly. This means that the books (and the seminar) will have more perceived value.
Used bullet points ("#5..... do this"). I believe he intentionally flubbed the numeration sometimes to keep our attention, a technique he later called the "stumblebum"
black-outfitted staff visually does not exist, like puppeteers.
Layered meanings when talking about genius and quality. Held up Galileo and said "What you see here" is genius/quality/whatever. This con-fuses the glory of the famous authority with what the audience is actually "seeing here". Brilliant.
book fetish, as part of an appeal to authority and age: first edition Renaissance texts handled lovingly by support staff, and, at one planned moment, by an audience member.
"do what X did". Taps into the current self-help mode of modeling Renaissance masters.
Holds up his own books with same posture as he held up Galileo, Newton, and Euclid. Wonderful!
physical stunt throwing newspapers for effect. Elicited great response by making the last paper mentioned the final newspaper . "... and the Dallas Morning News!"
Modeled behaviors when talking about them. used tonal bends just before talking about them, and distracting physical gestures in the same way. Very subtle leading, and more effective than if he'd displayed them afterwards. This way the audience figures it out and it plays as both an inside joke and a lesson. Projects mastery ("he knew what he was doing all along")

Edward Tufte: "Presenting Data and Information"

Content

Methods

Suggested Readings

Fundamentals

Advanced Readings

Videos

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