Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7902 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 156 pages

Amazon.com
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.

From Library Journal
Tufte is the master of visualization. You can immediately add this new work alongside his previous gems, Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) and Envisioning Information (1990, both from Graphics). Tufte's discussions take place in a world where specific software and certain parameters of the web don't exist?we all know such limitations are always changing anyway. His historical perspective allows Tufte to demonstrate simple, timeless guidelines that are independent of special stylesheets or the latest upgrade from Netscape. In this volume, Tufte illustrates not only traditional areas such as statistics, repetitions, and multiples but also magic and compositional allegories.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Richard J. Meislin
For more than 15 years, Edward R. Tufte has been on a crusade to educate people who want to explain the world visually to others ... In his new volume, Tufte, who teaches information design at Yale, is once again full of compelling and amusing examples, intelligently collected and attractively displayed ... The printing once again is lavish and beautiful, and the book is alive with instructive visual fun...

Customer Reviews

another great book by Tufte on graphs
In this third book by Tufte on graphics, he provides great examples through history where good pictures conveyed important information to decision makers and bad graphics left uncetainty and indecision. A great success story is the identification of the source of the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s. With regard to the Challenger Space Shuttle, Tufte suggests that one good picture may have convinced the NASA engineers of the need to avoid launching at low temperatures. Great pictures, great examples and great advice are found throughout the book. You may not believe that graphs can be used to answer all scientific questions but Tufte will convince you that they are important and must be done right!

Many good examples of illustrations
Many excellent examples on conveying many types of quantitative data across a wide variety of subjects. The only problem is that, to create most of these, one must be a graphic artist. If one needs to convey highly technical quantitative information, especially to layman, this gives the reader a good idea/perspective of how to explain to graphic artists hired along what general lines an illustration should be made.

What a gem - but not your first design book
Tufte's series on visualization will surely go down as classics. He's readable, he's right, and he's engaging.

The only thing is, as pretty and as well-founded the book is in certain principles, it's my opinion that... that the average reader doesn't understand design problems enough that this book will present anything new.

Meaning, the book is so intuitive, that, it seems pointless anyone would ever have to write a beautiful book like this -- *UNLESS* you have been stymied over and over again by mudglobs of creative ad hoc-kery and ad-hoc functionality, or, if you have been victimized by the unfunctional sheen of superglossy animated 3-d search engines (data visualizations, etc).

Here's maybe the test -- if the price tag of this book seems excessive, you haven't been slogging through enough terrible textbooks to see what a light and airy gem of fresh... >sigh< air this book is.

Otherwise - buy the Tufte series all at once, and see if you can't save bucks on the group discount.