I've admired Tufte's work since he first published "visual display..." so I leapt on this when it appeared and purchased 17 copies for colleagues at work. They liked and agreed with it, but dismissed it as impractical advice!

I find I agree with almost all his points about PowerPoint's dumbing down of information, but then sat back an thought about the message and the medium. Powerpoint is a tool for presentations - it focuses the audience, keeps the presenter on track and provides handy reminders. It's not intended to be a high information content medium.

However the abuse of powerpoint comes in its use a a non-presentation way to distribute information. So often a person who misses the presentation asks for the slides as an alternative to being there. Now Tufte comes into his own and his points are more relevant because the Powerpoint has become the message and there is no presenter to amplify the information.

This pamphlet is useful, but only when considered in context of what you want to do with your PowerPoint slides - are they going to become the message (as in the Columbia examination) or are they the medium to keep the presenter on track. Read his other books as well and write a White Paper or report to go with your slides.

SLIDE ONE

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition by Edward R. Tufte makes me wonder:

- can you make a point in list format?
- why are we in such a hurry to get to our point?
- is Tufte making a statement by referring to PowerPoint as PP in his text?
- why do we think style is more communicative than substance?

SLIDE TWO

Reasons to get and read this book:

- you'll never want to make a class presentation using PowerPoint again, even if it is required you do so
- if you never noticed irritating blips, beeps, background color and distracting graphics...you will after reading the book
- it will give you cause to sit back and really talk for a while about what you think, rather than give visual bites (the PowerPoint version of sound bites)

This short article - it is not long enough to be called a book - is more of a rant than useful instruction. Save your money. He has written several good books on data presentation; this is not one of them.

This is a very good read for everyone who has relied on powerpoints to disseminate information, especially critical information

Reading and adherence to the guidelines in this handy little tome should be standard operating practice for all who prepare presentations for an audience - be it a classroom, board of directors or jury.

Whether you love or hate Microsoft PowerPoint and its kin, you owe it to yourself to listen to Edward Tufte. His argument is well-reasoned and the evidence damning. While most of us will continue to crank out PowerPoint presentations, we should know the dangers of the form and commit ourselves to "first, do no harm."

Edward Tufte insightfully tells us how PowerPoint corrupts the communication process by forcing its format on content. For me, this is just another example of dumbing down in general. No longer do managers communicate via reasoned analysis through narrative. No, all communication must be as brief as possible and to the point. Unfortunately, sometimes the point needs more than just a multi-bulleted slide. Tufte's argument is highlighted by the PowerPoint parody of the Gettysburg Address. I too experience the constraint of expressing important detail, context and relationships when the expectation is to fit it into a Word table or a Power Point presentation. Now, this is not a call for wordiness. Unnecessarily long and tedious papers will do just as well in stifling communication. The point is to learn to write well and communicate well, without surrendering to the allure of the promises of new technology that may actually provide the opposite. Read Tufte's treatise and get a good idea of what not to do and why.

Tufte's criticism of PowerPoint is excellent. He points out its worst failings: low information density, forcing all thought into "bullets", etc. However, he does not provide suggestions for alternative ways to present quantitative information beyond "use other graphical forms".

Also, potential buyers should note that this essay is included as a chapter in _Beautiful Evidence_.

This document is an excellent review without prejudices of a very common Office tool: PowerPoint. It is the proof that common tools are not necessarily good tools or professional tools.
Only to mention that this sepparate chapter can be found included in the book "Beautiful Evidence", also by E. Tufte.

"The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" is really an essay as opposed to a book. Written by Edward Tufte, this is well worth reading if you use Microsoft PowerPoint at work, in school or at home. It is enlightening in terms of how the medium - PowerPoint in this case - can affect the message.

So as to contextualize this publication, the author, Edward Tufte, is one of the world's leading authorities on presenting information graphically. A prolific writer, Tufte has been deemed the "Galileo of Graphics...the Leonardo da Vinci of Data...and the world's leading analyst of graphic information" by various well-known sources. Put another way, Tufte knows of what he speaks.

The focus of this essay is on how PowerPoint (and other like presentation tools, in my opinion) reduces certain qualities of information and on how presenters can improve presentations in general.

In addition to being an informative read, the mock "Gettysburg Address" using PowerPoint is hysterical and makes a clear point through humor.

Highly recommended.

I was first introduced to Tufte in Beautiful Evidence, which I stumbled upon in a B&N in Seattle on a business trip. I'm a software architect and developer; hence, I'm very familiar with the software world, particularly Microsoft technologies, which is where most of my development experience lies.

(I should say that I read this as part of the Beautiful Evidence book, which was good, but this part irritated me, so I'm glad it's separate here so I can review it separately.)

Certainly, Tufte has some good points about showing how PowerPoint can be limiting, and certainly PowerPoint has been abused. But that's no grounds to indict it as a useful tool, and in particular, 2007 gets a lot better in terms of empowering presenters to have more effective and visually interesting slides.

The point of PPT slides is simply to supplement a presentation by providing visual reinforcement of what is being said audibly. They shouldn't be used as a substitute for other means of communicating, which would include the possibility of a handout (interestingly enough, you can print out slides w/ space for notes to use as a handout, so it isn't an either-or option) or using some other software or even your hands to draw up and scan in visualizations that can't be done with PPT.

I think what bothered me more than anything was the ignorant indictment of the software industry as a whole. Tufte goes way out on a limb trying to extrapolate how we software creators must think based on the capabilities of PPT. There are plenty of other tools that provide other ways of visualizing information, and every year (or more often) we see advancements in tooling to help folks more effectively express data and ideas in digital format.

His rambling about the "hierarchical" structure of the corporate software world driving the development of software is simply ludicrous. More than any other industry, I'd say that software dev tends to be more open and more fluid in terms of both organization and methodology. We're a bunch of brainiacs, inventors, and artisans, and it comes naturally for us to try out new ideas and ways of doing even the most mundane of things.

So to sum up, as long as Tufte stays within his realm of expertise (which seems to be visualization of information/graphic design), he has a lot of quality ideas to offer. However, when he strays from that as he's done with his essay on PowerPoint, the value of his thoughts diminish exponentially. Stick with reading his other books that are in his area of expertise.

I was first introduced to Tufte in Beautiful Evidence, which I stumbled upon in a B&N in Seattle on a business trip. I'm a software architect and developer; hence, I'm very familiar with the software world, particularly Microsoft technologies, which is where most of my development experience lies.

(I should say that I read this as part of the Beautiful Evidence book, which was good, but this part irritated me, so I'm glad it's separate here so I can review it separately.)

Certainly, Tufte has some good points about showing how PowerPoint can be limiting, and certainly PowerPoint has been abused. But that's no grounds to indict it as a useful tool, and in particular, 2007 gets a lot better in terms of empowering presenters to have more effective and visually interesting slides.

The point of PPT slides is simply to supplement a presentation by providing visual reinforcement of what is being said audibly. They shouldn't be used as a substitute for other means of communicating, which would include the possibility of a handout (interestingly enough, you can print out slides w/ space for notes to use as a handout, so it isn't an either-or option) or using some other software or even your hands to draw up and scan in visualizations that can't be done with PPT.

I think what bothered me more than anything was the ignorant indictment of the software industry as a whole. Tufte goes way out on a limb trying to extrapolate how we software creators must think based on the capabilities of PPT. There are plenty of other tools that provide other ways of visualizing information, and every year (or more often) we see advancements in tooling to help folks more effectively express data and ideas in digital format.

His rambling about the "hierarchical" structure of the corporate software world driving the development of software is simply ludicrous. More than any other industry, I'd say that software dev tends to be more open and more fluid in terms of both organization and methodology. We're a bunch of brainiacs, inventors, and artisans, and it comes naturally for us to try out new ideas and ways of doing even the most mundane of things.

So to sum up, as long as Tufte stays within his realm of expertise (which seems to be visualization of information/graphic design), he has a lot of quality ideas to offer. However, when he strays from that as he's done with his essay on PowerPoint, the value of his thoughts diminish exponentially. Stick with reading his other books that are in his area of expertise.

This pdf is now part of the book Beautiful Evidence. Tufte goes after the bullet text methodology and templates that starve the audience for information. There is a lot that you may do with PowerPoint that can be effective forms of communication. Tufte shows what to avoid.

Very informative reading, and quite entertaining. For me, it's preaching to the converted, but it makes the point quite powerfully. The only downside is that it's a very thin pamphlet, not a real book. Get The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition for a larger and more satisfying dose.

I have a friend whose ten-year-old daughter is required to give Powerpoint "reports" in class. Even before I read this pamphlet, the idea of the public schools positioning rhetoric as a Microsoft product struck me as revolting. After reading Tufte's brilliant and accurate dissection of how Powerpoint forces us into a kind of imitation of thinking, I am horrified.

I work on the fringe of the tech world, and I've had more than one boss demand that I reduce a coherent argument to bulletpoints "so it can be understood." Well, Powerpoint is to persuasion as comic books are to fiction -- the audience that demands it is simply entrenched in its own illiteracy. Tufte demonstrates persuasively that the Challenger disaster may have been caused -- yes, caused -- by the fact that the engineers discussed the project in the diction of "presentations." It's a large claim, and Tufte has the posthumous support of Richard Feynmann to back him up. Feynmann pointed to the facts that created the disaster; Tufte finds the core of bad thinking that let those facts control events.

If you use Powerpoint, you should read this pamphlet, also available as a chapter of Tufte's book, Beautiful Evidence. No tool should be allowed to control the nature of discourse the way Powerpoint does, and certainly no tool concieved, created, and used, with such willful lack of imagination and ignorance of the nature of communication.

Edward Tufte gives a brief, excellent examination of how using Microsoft PowerPoint can easily lead to miscommunication and lazy thinking. The example of the infamous "Review of Test Data Indicates Conservatism for Tile Penetration" (Space Shuttle Columbia) slide alone makes this monograph worth purchasing.

Your analysis is not of much value if you can't communicate the learnings, and make those learnings be remembered. Tufte has a unique approach to illustrating what one has found out, and making it stick. Good reading, great examples, and a fun book.

The book is not just about PowerPoint. The title should be
changed to "The Bad Cognitive Style of PowerPoint". Tufte, an
authority on statistical graphics and visualization, accurately
points out the problems of bullet-oriented slides and the
problems of PowerPoint. The essay is not just Tufte's subjective
judgments. Instead, the argument is baked up by case studies,
quantitative comparisons, and sometimes parody of Stalin and
Abraham Lincoln. It is so hard to argue against Tufte's point
after reading the book: PowerPoint is a extremely bad medium for
presenting ideas and data.

The conclusion, however, is not really useful for readers like me
who go to this book for practical tips, not just yet another
PowerPoint-bashing. Tufte doesn't seem sympathetic to both
presenters and audience. Presenters all know bullet points are
bad, unable to completely present our ideas, but they still turn
to bullet points, just like all smokers know smoking causes lung
cancer, but they still smoke? Have Tufte wondered why?
Moreover, did he offer a better solution? The best he can do is
to ask people to give up PowerPoint. This "solution" is
irresponsible. Tufte never provides any pieces of evidence to
show how easily an alternative to bullet points can help
presenters organize ideas. It's like asking people to stop
driving because of global warming, but they don't tell people who
have to commute one hour every day what to do.

Tufte suggests to give a detailed handout as an alternative.
When I go to a science or engineering conference, I do have
4-page or 8-page papers to read for each presentation. But will
I, as audience of a talk, have time reading papers before or
during the talk? The answer is no. Tufte points out many flaws
in the Boeing's slide during the Columbia accident, but I really
wonder how Tufte would do if he was asked to give a scientific
presentation in 20 minutes with a handout. Bullet points are
bad, but can he beat the bullet points approach?

The book didn't convince me that Tufte can win. Maybe the 2nd
edition published in 2006 will.

I can hardly believe that Edward Tufte, the great guru of design wrote this one. It's great to raise issues, act negative, and point out problems. Let me be frank, today everyone needs to create PowerPoint presentations in so many ways including webcasts. How does Edward Tufte plan to tackle that? Rather than explain how to work around limitations and accept PowerPoint as just another medium, this book goes into a directionless tirade against Microsoft's program.

Incidentally, I just read another book and can't resist adding this note here. I love the way color theory for presentations is explained in Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies. I always thought Dummies books were for dummies. Now I've changed my opinion. Maybe, it's time Edward Tufte should accept presentations as part of business and industry and use his design ideas to help us create better presentations.