The Adnostic

I went to a one-day seminar on graphical data presentation with Edward Tufte in Downtown LA on January 31st. People who were not there may consider them nonsense, but these are my notes:

Gather information in whatever form it takes to explain something.
- Multiple levels of information
- Segregation by discipline
- Ref: Beautiful Evidence, pg. 79 SARS Diagram
-- Data points = nouns
-- Connecting lines = verbs, differentiated/annotated to define relationship

Efficiency = elimination of unnecessary data, no "chart junk," more room for content (Beautiful Evidence, pg. 79)

Provide reasons to believe through design, establish credibility
- Peer review, credible publication, detail, source
- Constant caveat - Accept until better evidence is presented, or alternative explanation.
-- We want an open mind, but not an empty head.

Visual Explanation, pg. 90 Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music
- Intriguing texture of content
- Evoke a content response
- "But where is Emmy Lou Harris?"
- High resolution display = interactive
- The viewer explores on their own
- The design is simple; the content is rich and complex
- Clutter is not an attribute of information; it is a result of bad design (failure)

Visual Explanation, pg. 120 Quote from Salmon Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- Sustained visual metaphor in words
- Evidence does not care if it is in words or pictures

Envisioning Information, pg. 56, 57 Hospital Bill
- Annotation provides additional evidence
- Link words to a particular place
- Small but effective contrasts (grayed out lines)

All Purpose Consult
- Find good examples and copy them
- Talent imitates, genius steals
- Excellent conventional (widely used) examples
-- Performance data -> market, weather, or sports sections of newspaper
- Giving lots of data points creates greater interest
- Organize data/reporting style
-- Look to NYTimes or WSJ, in the appropriate section, for examples of reporting materials

Multimedia
- Multi Variant Problem (3+ variables) - high dimensional
- Information resolution, rate of information transfer
- Euclid's Geometry
- Legends take away from graphs
- Build a model