I returned to Tufte's first classic book of graphic design principles over 20 years after first discovering it. At the time, I was the corporate librarian for a major electric utility, and the explosion in the organization and creation of information by individuals with new personal-computer hardware and software was just beginning (I had an IBM PC-XT with 640Kb of RAM and two 360k floppies--no hard drive).

Now, I wondered, aside from the masterpiece of graphic design that "Visual Display" of course still represents, did Tufte's theories of graphics design still apply in a world where those computers at our fingertips pack the power and sophistication of the best publishing equipment? The answer is yes: Tufte's guidelines are timeless and universal, and most of his examples predate the computer era and even the 20th century.

The guidelines boil down to the single principle of making design choices that result in the simplest possible display of complex data. While that may not sound profound, Tufte provides simple and practical rules for implementing sound design choices, and the resulting improvements in your documents and web designs will be noticeable.

I was able to read this fairly quickly. (stealing a few hours here and there at work).

Although I did not find any direct solutions to my current problems - it definitely opened my imagination to consider new possibilities.

It definitely was interesting and educational to read and see Tufte's presentation on Visual Dispaly of Quantitative Information. He illustrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of graphic displays over the centuries. However, I was hoping to see more examples of current computer graphics that should be emulated in this edition instead of terse comments and skeletal constructs in this area.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but Tufte would rather right it all down. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

This is a somewhat interesting book for the catalogue of historical visual presentations, but has little to offer someone working today. The most amazing thing about this book is its incessant use of verbiage instead of visual display.

If Tufte intended his book as irony, then bravo.

If you're looking for actual help in visual display using the tools most of us have at our disposal (not the extremely expensive software that Tufte suggests) then look elsewhere for help. I recommend:

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
or
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam

Indexed by Jessica Hagy

If you want to see great (and fun) visual displays on the web, then hit graphjam.com, zfacts.com and indexed.blogspot.com.

I would also suggest a trip to the dentist over paying for one of Tufte's seminars. Getting your teeth drilled is more pleasant than a slide show of Tufte's sculpture garden accompanied by his pedantic narcissism.

Nutshell review - This is an excellent book on chart design and the effective presentation of information. Beautifully illustrated with in-depth insight and research.

Mr. Tufte's book is like nothing I ever read before. At first I was put off by his uber self-confidence, but as I read the book further, I realized that the self-confidence was not out of place.
In an entertaining way, with splendid examples and splendid anti-examples, this book gets to the core of presenting honest and dense data and eliminating all pretense. Wait 'til you grasp the concept of "Small Multiples" and just as importantly, when not to use a graph.
Before I was finished the book, I revamped a couple of my charts and upgraded one to showing multiple variables across multiple years using "Small Multiples".

I own all of Edward Tufte's books, and regularly order his booklets for my MBA students. The reason is simple: to make good decisions, and to help others make good decisions, one must convey data as information and not simply as numbers, words, or even pictures. Business periodicals regularly violate the admonitions we learned in our introductory statistics courses, including failing to use zero as the bottom of any scale (these periodicals don't use zero in order to exaggerate changes). The reason that intelligent people convey data inappropriately is either to deliberately distort it, or because they've failed to read Tufte's books.

Once you've purchased this first book by Tufte, you will never look at charts or other graphical displays without a jaundiced eye. You will also will begin to be more honest in how you convey information to others. You will make better decisions, and you will raise the standard for other communicators and decision makers. Life and death decisions do get made on the basis of data, and not just in the sciences and medicine. Buy this book and you will have a very tough time putting it down.

Aneil Mishra
[...]

This is Tufte's best book in my opinion, maybe because this was his first book I bought. I use this book weekly. I learned many good lessons from Tufte.

Everybody should read a book like "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and I do not mean the professionals in the field but really everybody. Tufte really opens your mind and makes you aware of the possibly malevolent or just misleading representations of data we are faced with every day on magazines, newspapers, TV and the web.

This was the first of three books written by Tufte on graphical displays. This book has been heralded by famous statisticians and average readers as an eloquent description of the how to and how not to make graphs. Now in its sixteenth printing, this is still a classic and the pictures tell the story along with the prose.

The book came in wrapped as it was described. Highly recommend for excellent amazon seller.

This was the first of three books written by Tufte on graphical displays. This book has been heralded by famous statisticians and average readers as an eloquent description of the how to and how not to make graphs. Now in its sixteenth printing, this is still a classic and the pictures tell the story along with the prose.

The book came in wrapped as it was described. Highly recommend for excellent amazon seller.

To put it simply, this book is one of the very best I have ever had in my hands. The subject is of utmost importance to everyone having to convey quantitative information to non-specialist audiences. The book is both very thorough in the treatment of the subject and extremely pleasant to read. You read it for fun and you learn enormously in the process. In addition, the typography and layout of the book are in perfect sync with its message. A stunning piece of work.

In this book Edward R. Tufte show us how we tend to over complicate things and how visual effects tend to distort the story that the numbers have to tell us. He introduces the concept of information to ink ratio is introduced, which is a fancy way of saying that each pixel on a chart should add information or help to it's comprehention.

The book is also a beautiful collection of historical charts, whose authors intuitively knew the importance of un-cluttered information but to which Edward Tufte adds his personal touch to make them modern works of art. My personal favorites are the "Carte figurative", which shows the progress of the Napoleonic war and the one shown on the book cover, which represents a train schedule.

Tufte points out common general flaws in presentation of data. He then goes on to examine specific conventional ways of displaying information (boxplots, scatter plots, etc.) and proposes improvements to them.

This is an approachable and informative book which will, as the title says, get you thinking about effective and clear ways to display data.

This book has been talked up by about every design professional I've seen speak at conferences across the country. I bought it to hop on the band wagon -- and it was a great purchase.

It starts as a bit of a dry read, but has some of the greatest content and insight into the theory and profession of information design. Check it out.

Buy this book, buy more copies for your bathroom and garage, take it with you to work and on vacation, petition your state to legally recognize your entering into a civil union with this book. The combination of elegance, brevity, and depth in this book has to be experienced to be believed - and beyond all this, it serves as a utterly practical manual that shares the shelf with Strunk & White. If you don't buy and read this book you will be reincarnated as an unenlightened human until you do so.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book.

As a graphic designer and a minimalist: I love the way this book looks and I love the graphics Tufte's team has created.

Yet: the minimalist in me also dislikes Tufte's prose, which is surprisingly un-minimalist. The text is repetitive, and although Tufte does use this effectively at times to reiterate or summarize concepts, there are far more instances where I feel the repetition is simply irritating (Tufte's poems and block-quote summaries are, to me, good examples of this).

The minimalist in me is also not fond of the nature in which Tufte presents his opinions. Tufte makes frequent use of words like "lies" and "tricks," and while I am not fond of the targets of Tufte's derision, I feel that use of these words unnecessarily and unfairly assumes that poor graphs are always the result of malicious intent. Tufte's presentation as a whole, I feel, is often unnecessarily condescending (see e.g., p 120); indeed, Tufte seems to feel that unenlightened minds somehow deserve our ridicule and contempt.

As an academically-oriented statistician: I also have mixed feelings. I give Tufte an immense amount of credit for opening a dialog about statistical graphics. And, I am grateful to him for pointing out the flaws and "wrongs" in the ways in which statistics are so often presented and suggesting ways in which these approaches can be changed. Moreover: I happen to agree tremendously with a large amount of what Tufte has to say, and often passionately so.

That said: I am puzzled by the amount of relevant concepts which are omitted from this text (or merely brushed over). Good examples include: samples versus populations, confounding, continuous versus categorical data, and exploratory graphics versus graphics presented for presentation.

For that reason: the academic and statistician in me is watchful of Tufte's role as an instructor of statistical ideas. Much of what Tufte has to say is not in fact unique or necessarily "right," and it is also not nearly close to being all there is to be said about statistical graphics (even at an introductory level). If students allow this text to be the sole contribution to their statistical education, I fear that -- without statistical intuition or knowledge to draw from -- they will not be critical statistical thinkers but blind followers. (Of course, none of this is intended to be a criticism of Tufte or Tufte's book per se...)

Those seeking a good overview of statistical graphics: keep in mind that this not strictly an instructional book. And while I wouldn't discourage you from reading or buying this text, I also wouldn't discourage you from seeking additional resources, either as an alternative or a supplement to Tufte's works. Much of the ideas supplied by Tufte here -- plus a great deal more -- can fundamentally be found in a good introductory statistical course or text, either directly or indirectly. Moreover, I would argue that there is absolutely no substitution for such an education.

The ability to communicate important information concisely, precisely, and with high fidelity is the essence of successful sales and marketing presentations. Tufte's book offers a wonderful set of guidelines and examples in the use of graphics to communicate ideas that also applies directly to creating and delivering presentations in a sales or marketing meeting or demo.

It is wonderful to see him "deconstruct" overly ornate graphics, removing unnecessary elements to render an image in its strongest possible form. Those organizations that suffer from too much "fluff" in their marketing and sales materials should contemplate applying his principles to their collateral and presentations!

This book is a real tool that should be read thoughtfully by anyone in sales, presales, or marketing, and then remain in easy access on your business bookshelf. The graphic of Napoleon's advance upon Moscow and his subsequent retreat is worth the price alone.

This book established Tufte as the authority on the subject of graphs, charts, tables, indeed the display of data by any means. The book is readable by most anyone and will add to your library and your ability to make your way intelligently and critically through the flood of statistical and graphical arguments and pitches placed before us every day.

Simply and confidently Tufte lays out the basics of the right and the wrong, the good and the bad (and occasionally ugly) regarding graphical depictions of data and information.

This book (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition )is the first and the foundation of four books by Tufte (I. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition. II. Envisioning Information. III. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. IV. Beautiful Evidence.) that should be read in the order of publication. You will be a wiser person for the effort.

His short book, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within", while not part of the "four volume set" is a withering attack on the ubiquitous software program, an attack based on the fact that it encourages the user to break nearly every principle that Tufte has spent the last 20 years elucidating in his books regarding the reading and the writing and presentation of well thought out and presented arguments and reports. I've read it and was convinced; PP constrains complex thought, argument, and statistical (indeed any form of) reasoning with its "bullet points", and is a very inefficient means of depicting information as well, cluttering the display space with useless clip art, huge fonts, and often misleading cookie-cutter graphs. (His satirical PP presentation of the Gettysburg Address humorously makes his points, while his analysis of a very real NASA PowerPoint slide from the decision-making meetings regarding the danger to the Space Shuttle Columbia before its destruction on re-entry makes his points in a very sobering manner.)

All this being said, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a Great Book. In the internet age we all spend many hours per week looking at visual depictions of information. Tufte's book will make you a more critical user of nearly everything, from the newspaper, to websites, to work presentations, the sports pages, and even your car's speedometer and other gauges. It is the foundation to all of his published work from the last two decades.

Buy this book!

This book fuses mathematical information with art to tell the underlying story and get your message across to the viewer. I would reccommend it to anyone responsible for conveying objective information to others.

This book was very nicely laid out, and the ideas for presenting were good. Sometimes it was a little hard to follow because it rambled a little. But I did get some good pointers that I can use to visualize my data.

The book strikes a good balance between major concepts and academic nitty-gritty.

Tufte presents an examination of a frankly under-esteemed method of data analysis that can be accurately described as passionate. As a Behavioural Scientist trained in sophisticated methods of statistical analysis, I previously was arrogantly inclined to regard charts and graphs as simplistic and naive approaches to data interpretation. However, I now apprehend the undeniable utility of graphical representation, and have acquired a fascination with the field through Tufte's contagious enthusiasm.

If you work with data of any form, it is IMPERATIVE that you read this book.

An interesting and well presented book, but very specialized.

An interesting and well presented book, but very specialized.

The Visual Diplay of Quantitative Information is not exactly a how-to book, in that it won't give you step by step instructions on how to create charts. Rather Tufte shows us principles of good design, principles of bad design (i.e. how people lie with graphics) all accompanied by many inspirational examples.

His examples strike us with their beauty and economy and show us how picturing data makes a huge difference in how effectively and quickly we understand it. Looking at Mivart's chart of Napoleon's march on Moscow, or the Salyut 6 hand drawn mission schedule, or a Japanese train schedule can only make a geek like me gush out "Way cool!".

I find it gratifying that Tufte takes so many examples from Japan, where I live. The Japanese are often accused of simply working with other people's ideas. This is naive and the Visual Diplay of Quantitative Information provides an excellent counterexample of the Japanese being sophisticated leaders in a creative endeavor.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

I was one of those chart-makers who used color just because I could, even when it was unnecessary or even inappropriate. This book changed the way I looked at graph-making. His concepts of data per unit of ink (which should be maximized), and trying to make each droplet of ink convey something useful were extremely helpful, as were his suggestions to minimize distractions and phony 3-d effects.

This, and his second book, "Envisioning Information" are must-reads for anyone designing computer statistical tools (like I was) or simply trying to convert raw data into meaningful graphs, maps, etc.

Very good book. I really enjoyed the quality of graphs and interpretion of them. Tufte gives practical guidelines and observations about graphs and graph-making.

Tufte's work is absolutely essential for everyone in the business of creating or consuming Information, which is to say, Everyone. Although his book is extremely beautiful, some of the most essential advice is so crystal-clear that even the Graphically Challenged will gain from reading it.
Although readers will also get a lot out of Tufte's other two books, "Envisioning Information" and "Visual Explanations", there is no question that this is the book that had the largest impact, and which contains the most original thinking. This book was like a bucket of cold water in the face of established thinking regarding Graphic Design and the reporting of Information.

Pros:
1. This book is considered by some one of the key books in this field
2. It has some great observations on how to detects "lies" within charts
3. General advices are sound (if a bit obvious): don't use irrelevant marks, shades and hatches; do plot information...
4. Some interesting information on history of graphs

Cons:
1. The book is dated. This is the 2001 edition but I am not sure how much updating has happened since the late 1980s.
2. Some proposed techniques are peculiar; the author goes way too far into removing what he considers redundant lines: he has a new box plot and a new way to do bar charts that (although contain the same information from a mathematical point of view) will just loose the audience focus, since the audience will spend attention into puzzling out the new graph
3. The book is extremely idiosyncratic on what types of charts it covers, and you are likely not find anything of interest to you besides the general advice

The book is dated. This might well be the 2001 edition but I am not sure how much updating has happened since the late 1980s.

General advices are not bad if a obvious: don't use irrelevant marks, shades and hatches; do plot information...
Technique proposed though are peculiar to say the least. I find the examples or "good graphs" to be terribly bad, since they change standard practices that everybody is used to see in the name of this author's aesthetic view, without adding any substance. E.g. the author has come up with a new way of doing the "box plot"; I will agree with the author that his version of the "box plot" conveys exactly the same information as the original "box plot", but the whole world is used to see the "box plot" drawn one way and I don't want to loose half of the audience while they are puzzling out the new "box plot" and asking themselves why on earth I am using this different style to fix something that was not broken.

The book has some modest value. Some pieces of advice are actually good, the section on data integrity is good, but all in all I am sure that I could have gotten a better book.

This is absolutely one of the books that should be proudly displayed on everyone researcher's bookshelf: it details a usable theory of data graphics, provides an excellent rogue's gallery of misleading figures, and is the kind of well-designed book that we need to see more of.

The only thing I can find about this to complain about is the fact that the majority of what Tufte presents as new and better methods for presenting or refining old styles of plots CANNOT be found in modern graphing packages.

In truth, this is wholly an excellent book for anyone that has to deal with graphs. If you have ever been interested in a graph, or have ever been fascinated by data, get a copy of this book. It won't disappoint.

If you do science or engineering and you don't want confused people trying to understand your message while you struggle to explain yourself, then you need this book. Covering literally hundreds of ways to present charts, still graphics, dynamic graphics, engineering diagrams, the use of perspectives, coloring, shading in photographs and drawings, plots and so on, Tufte has collected both the worst and the best-of-the-best from history get his point across.

Alex Alaniz Ph.D.

1. Please see the reviews of my own strong science fiction book: Beyond Future Shock about the near-terms perils and promise of advanced bio/nano technology in a world still roiled with Middle Age religious conflict and ever growing extreme wealth gradients.

2. I have REVIEWED many books from undergraduate to graduate in: PHYSICS, MATH, ECONOMETRICS, and HISTORY among other areas.

I recieved this book along with the most excellent (almost a companion book) Envisioning Information, from my CEO. Since I work a lot with numbers and he had been stressing the importance of presenting data clearly and concisely.

I feel that, this book, more than being a guide to creating beautiful charts is a book to appreciate charts. The book mroe hopes that we will do the right thing rather than instructing us how to do the right thing.

If you have ever wondered how statisticians communicated data before Excel then you've found the right book to settle your curiosity. For some this may be a seaside read, but for me it is a great coffee table companion. I've learned something new every day for the last couple of months. This won't make an artist out of anyone, but it will guide you through the thought process of choosing appropriate methods to convey data.

Very good book, explained everything in black and white, really cant go wrong!

I am a technical writer whose graphic skills are underdeveloped so I am learning more about graphic design. First, the contents of this books are physically beautiful. Second, Tufte explains how he thinks about design, establishing its importance and demystifying it at the same time. Third, the book helped me to feel less intimidated by thinking visually about the presentation of information. Finally, the book opened up, even if ever-so-sligthly, other modes of experiencing reality, for this left-brained person.

This is a book that everybody who handles data, whether simple and complex, should read. And if he/she is in the position of influence, he should get other members of his team to read it and, more importantly, to practice it.

Though some of the examples of computer graphics are dated, the principles still resonate. This book was recommended to me in the late 80's and is still the major influence in how I think about presenting data. Tufte writes with quick wit and tremendous examples.

Buy the book in spite of the title - it belongs on every professional's bookcase.

I have heard this book described as a really good coffee-table book. It's content, while often technical and very much focused on the theory of graphs and diagrams and data and information, very practically demonstrates the impact of how quantitative information is visually presented, and shows many alternatives that are quantum improvements on the originals. It's easy to draw out the principles that Tufte demonstrates, and to apply them to your own work.

The book's examples are drawn from many interesting areas such as the New York State Budget, train schedule graphs, irrigation maps of 1972, heights of college students, the price of crude oil and the thermal conductivity of tungsten. Through these case studies, Tufte makes conscious for the reader the way in which humans read visual information and how poorly the majority of our visual information is designed in respect of this.

It has greatly influenced the work I do in helping people design reports of organisational performance information, how they choose and format charts in particular. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who regularly reports or presents data and information to others to assist their decision making.

If you buy just one of Edward Tufte's three wonderful books on good graphical practice (soon to be four, incidentally: watch out for Beautiful Evidence, expected later this year), then it has to be this one, because it is here that he sets out the principles that underlie all of his later work. It is a book that everyone who uses graphs for displaying information needs to read and read again. Every page contains something of interest and importance, and sometimes something entertaining as well.

So, what are these principles that define a good graphic? First of all, the presentation must be honest. So far as deliberate dishonesty is concerned this is obvious, but often graphical dishonesty results from incompetence rather than bad intentions. A frequent error of this kind is to vary the linear dimensions of little drawings intended to represent the relative magnitudes of different things. It is common, for example, when one quantity has double the magnitude of another to represent this with a drawing that not only has double the length but also double the width of the other, forgetting that this means that it has four times the area. In more elaborate illustrations where the drawings imply three dimensions, i.e. depth as well as length and width, doubling the linear size implies multiplying the volume by eight.

To this point Tufte's arguments are surely uncontroversial, but he goes on to discuss other principles that excellent graphics display and bad ones do not, and here he may part company with some of his readers. He dislikes meaningless decoration -- flourishes intended to make "dry statistics" more interesting. However, as he rightly says, if the statistics are not interesting in the first place one should not be presenting them, and if they are interesting they don't need decoration to make them more so. Another point -- related to this one, but more extended -- is that good graphics maximize what he calls data ink: as far as possible all of the ink used in printing the graphic should be conveying information about the data. Grids, scale measures, frames and so on should be kept to a minimum and should never be allowed to overwhelm the data they are supporting. A good graphic should be clear, but at the same time contain many details that constantly call the attention back.

The book is fairly repetitive, as certain examples recur during the course of reading it. However, this is deliberate, and probably essential. When we see a truly excellent graphic for the first time, such as the summary of New York City's weather in 1980, which appears in Chapter 1, we can see immediately that it is excellent, but it is less evident what makes it excellent. To understand this we need to have the various features explained and contrasted with some of the truly horrible examples that Tufte also provides: the very large quantity of real information contained in a small space, the simultaneous comparison of numerous different variables, the intelligent (and not garish) use of shading, the explanatory labels within the graphic, and so on. Convincing the reader that all this is desirable, and that gratuitous shading, meaningless bright colours, and so on, are not, requires a leisurely pace and some repetition. Many readers simply don't get it even after it has been explained, and the continued frequency of really bad graphics underlines the necessity of Tufte's books.

I finally tracked down a copy of the 2nd edition (thanks interlibrary loan!) just to see if it's as good as most people say, or as bad as some people say. The examples are excellent, the layout is beautiful, and most importantly, Tufte doesn't overestimate the value of the graphics. This seems like an odd statement for a book about the value of graphics, but Tufte recognizes that graphics still need explanations, and he supplies them clearly and accurately.

So for you Amazon buyers: the fact that you're looking for this book shows that you care about making quality graphics, and thus you probably already know many of the rules that Tufte presents. Tufte does have the tendency to get a little maniacal in his desire to "eliminate ink" (c.f. pg. 125); you'd be better off adopting the principle and not the exact practice. And the book is short, so you'll have digested it in a reading or two. It's not like you'll go back again and again. But the biggest reason to get a copy of the book is so that you can lend it to everyone else around you, because there are a great number of people that need this book, but won't come looking for it. My copy's on its way, and I've got a list of students in my technical writing and publishing class that are going to be offered a chance to read it.

This book reminded me of my college days in that it is an essay advocating one approach to creating graphs and charts. The author has essentially one point he is making--to eliminate or minimize absolutely all ink that you can. Because Tufte takes this to the extreme, I see this book not as a standard how-to guide but as one person's OPINION on how to construct graphs.

While Tufte's mantra can be helpful, I found him to be rather single-minded, to the point that some of what he is doing is degrading, not improving, the graph. For instance, in a line or scatter graph he says we should eliminate parts of the x- and y- axes, in particular the stretch from the 0,0 point to wherever the first bit of data is plotted. I have a problem with this because one of the ways to create deceptive graphs is not to start your origin point at 0,0.

Tufte also writes from the standpoint of the scientific community. His minimalist approach may work very well for scientific and statistical uses, but not all graphs are created for those purposes. Sometimes we create graphs as marketing tools, and Tufte's one-size-fits-all principle just doesn't work here. For instance, a bar chart which shows a potential mutual fund investor that all funds from financial company X had a return of at least 110% or more. According to Tufte having a solid bar is not necessary, we should only make a line and top it off with a horizontal tick mark, producing something like a capital "T" or an upside-down capital "L." But if I'm in marketing I want to emphasize a long, vertical stretch of line because this is symbolic of product the customer may receive if they invest. The customer would notice a solid bar more than a single line.

If you want a practical how-to book, this is probably not for you. Myself, I was happy that I borrowed this book from the library rather than bought it. It's rather simple reading, and the useful points Tufte does bring out are more common sense than anything else. If you still want to read it, it's probably best to do so after reading more basic graph design books.

Edward Tufte is a prophet of the Information Age come to warn us that we must repent or be consigned to oblivion.

One of the great advances which has made the Information Age possible has been the development of easy-to-use graphing software to swiftly create charts which used to take skilled draftsmen days to produce.

Unfortunately, the commoditization and automation of this once-dear skill set has resulted in the proliferation of lies, damned lies, and lousy statistics.

Tufte, a Princeton professor and polymath with passionate interest in statistics, information design, and public policy, offers up a thorough diagnosis of what ails our data-rich, information poor society:

- Poor graphical integrity, where the visual proportions are out of synch with the data's proportions

- Chartjunk, unnecessary clutter which reduces the proportion of data-ink in a graphic

- Poor labeling, which robs data of context

- Low-density presentations, where complex and nuanced data are "dumbed down" for the sake of a fleeting aesthetic

Fear not---Dr. Tufte also provides the reader with a course of treatment (called "Graphical Excellence") thoroughly illuminated with real-world examples drawn throughout history.

This is one of those rare works which feeds both your right and left brain. It is a closely-argued work on behalf of clean and clear communications. It is also a wonderful art book depicting the evolution of an often-misunderstood art form.

Whether you're an engineer, a statistician, a businessman, or a teacher, this beautifully-designed book will help you become a more effective communicator.

Prof. Tufte uses an excellent assortment of charts and graphics to illustrate his points. I found this book to be a quick read; and one I could return to for years to come, as the principles he describes are quite applicable to web site design. I would recommend this book, in fact, I was impressed enough to sign up for the design seminar.

Other reviewers have mentioned a few negatives. To me, these mostly boil down to short-on-substance problems. The author is a bit pompous -- which wouldn't matter that much if he had a lot to say. Alas, he does not. The author's major point is: eliminate "chart junk" (e.g. 3-D effect bars, etc). He is manically obsessive-compulsive about this point so that he takes it to extremes -- get this: computing "data ink" to "junk ink" ratios he even eliminates the axis line (to increase the ratio). Giving the book a second chance now over a year later, I found that the "eliminate chartjunk" is not the sole point the author makes -- but 80% of the book is about that one point. During my "2nd chance" read of the book I did find a couple of substantive ideas: the white-grid run-thru of bars on bar charts, and the discussion of aspect ratios. (Plus the tics-at-data to give marginal disbn's of X and Y.) However, I still maintain, if you really want to learn new techniques and real-value PRINCIPLES get William Cleveland's two books "Elements of Graphing Data" and "Visualizing Data." Cleveland's book are enjoyable to read and filled with eminently useful ideas. I've used principles from Clevelend's book to great effect. I'd been graphing for decades, but with Cleveland's book I made a GIGUNDOUS jump in the quality of my graphical communication. Skip the low-on-substance, one-note Tufte and go for the full-of-substance, emminently useful Cleveland.

Other reviewers have mentioned a few negatives. To me, these mostly boil down to short-on-substance problems. The author is a bit pompous -- which wouldn't matter that much if he had a lot to say. Alas, he does not. In essence, the author makes one -- and only one! -- point with the whole book: eliminate "chart junk" (e.g. 3-D effect bars, etc). He is manically obsessive-compulsive about this point so that he takes it to extremes -- get this: computing "data ink" to "junk ink" ratios he even eliminates the axis line (to increase the ratio). While he's at it, just put tics and only where data are (thus giving marginal distributions of x and y) -- cute idea and it does increase "info"-to-junk ink to the max, but these ideas are nearly absurd extremes. If you really want to learn new techniques and real-value PRINCIPLES get William Cleveland's "Elements of Graphing Data" (original or revised). Don't be put off by publication date -- Cleveland's book is a superbly enjoyable read with eminently useful ideas. I've used principles from Clevelend's book to great effect. I've been graphing for decades, but with Cleveland's book I recently made a very large jump in the quality of my graphical communication. Skip the low-on-substance, one-note Tufte and go for the full-of-substance, emminently useful Cleveland.

I heard a lot of good things about Edward Tufte's books, and was told he was THE expert on graphics. When I was asked to read this book for work, I eagerly agreed and ordered it straight away. Now I'm sorry I wasted my time.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is poorly organized, and Tufte contradicts himself in many places. He includes a quote from E. B. White recommending that writers trust in their readers' intelligence, yet he does not. Everything is broken down bit by bit so that the intelligent reader must skim over half the content of the book to avoid wasting his or her time. While the ideas behind the book are good, the voice is condescending and irritating. In addition, the bizarre layout of the book is heavily unbalanced; some pages have several inches of white space all the way down the right hand side of the page, while others are so full of text and graphics that it is difficult to tell to what the citations refer, giving the page a jumbled, disorganized appearance. This is disappointing; Tufte says in the introduction that he controlled the book's layout, yet he, an expert in the art of visual display, produces an unblanced and jumbled display? I am sorry I bothered reading this book, and would urge others to avoid it.