The Practical Obsessions ofEdward R. Tufte

IIn 1982, Princeton professorEdward R. Tufte finished themanuscript of a book he calledThe Visual Display of QuantitativeInformation. Not finding a publish-er to his liking, he took out a sec-

ond mortgage on his home and self-pub-lished, saying, “My view on self-publishing wasto go all out, to make the best and most elegantand wonderful book possible, without compromise.Otherwise, why do it?”

Why indeed? As it turned out, VDQIwas immediately hailed as an elegant andwonderful classic, the first book ever toexcite general interest in something soordinary that it had largely escaped schol-arly and popular attention—namely, theincredible multitude of charts, graphs,maps, schedules, lists, labels, signs, nota-tion, instruction manuals, etc. in today’sworld, that is, all the myriad ways thatnumerical information is visually con-veyed. Tufte has since publishedEnvisioning Information and Visual Explanations;all three books are beautiful, educational,endlessly fascinating.

They are also amazingly useful, evenindispensable, to anyone producing anydocument that is intended to convey infor-mation of any kind. The poor, beleagueredsurveyor, struggling each day to squash abewildering amount of spatial, numerical,and even historical information onto a fewsheets of paper will use them all, but espe-cially the first, as desk references.

Consider Tufte on something as mun-dane as a table, e.g., a curve table. Hedevotes several pages to their proper layout,to methods that make them clearer andmore useful, more beautiful. He discusses(and illustrates) issues such as line weightand font selection, and makes these subjectsinteresting. He finds this quote from JanTschichold: “The setting of tables, often

approached with gloom, may with careful thoughtbe turned into work of great pleasure. First, try todo without rules altogether. They should be usedonly when the space between columns is so narrowthat mistakes will occur in reading without rules.Tables without vertical rules look better; thin rulesare better are better than thick ones.”

When I have applied this information, Ihave always had to agree—even setting upa table can be pleasurable, and there’s aright way and a wrong way to do it (seeFigure 1).

Another concrete and useful examplecan be found in Tufte’s views on capitaliza-tion. He shows that words set in all capsare in fact harder to read—the relative uni-formity of capitalized letters (equal height,equal volume, similar width) means thatthe words constructed from them are simi-lar to each other and therefore harder totell apart. Words set in ordinary upper-and-lower case are “friendlier”, more distinct,easier to read. Until reading this section, I

had thoughtlessly set headers, notes andstreet names in all caps. Now I don’t, andmy maps are the better for it.

Compare Figures 2a and 2b, whichcontrast a header from one of my maps.Figure 2b is not only easier to read andmore graceful in appearance, but it ismore economical of space, conveying thesame information in three lines instead offour—and what commodity is more pre-cious than space on a boundary map?

VDQI is not easily summarized; it is toodensely constructed, too slyly humorous,too profusely illustrated to capture in afew paragraphs. But here is a very smallsample of the “Grand Principles” sprin-kled throughout:

a) Show data.b) Show comparisons.c) Show causality.d) Maximize the data-to-ink ratio.

Convey information cleanly, without “junk”.

Figure 1

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By Angus W. Stocking, LSAngus Stocking is a survey department manager forMSA Professional Services in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.He has written humor and nonfiction for newspapers and magazines on a puzzling variety of topics.

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e) Annotate. Explain one’s sources andreasoning.

f) Direct labeling. Put labels and notesdirectly beside the thing beingexplained.

g) Do analysis within eye span. Don’t expect viewers to compareinformation on different pages.

Matters of Life and DeathPrinciples like these may seem dry andacademic, even trivial, but consider Tufte’sinvestigation of the Challenger disaster, inVisual Explanations. He is able to showconvincingly that Morton Thiokol engi-neers had reached the right conclusionabout the infamous O-rings when theyissued their only ‘no-launch’ recommenda-tion in 12 years. In two long phoneconferences the night before thelaunch, the problem of O-ring failurein cool temperatures was specificallydebated. The engineers had gooddata and had analyzed it properly;however, they failed miserably whenattempting to convey their reasoning toNASA officials. As Tufte says: “In the13 charts prepared for making the decisionto launch, there is a scandalous discrepancybetween the intellectual tasks at hand andthe images created to serve those tasks. Asanalytical graphics, the displays failed toreveal a risk that was, in fact, present. Aspresentation graphics, the displays failed topersuade government officials that a coldweather launch might be dangerous. Indesigning those displays, the chartmakers did-n’t quite know what they were doing, andthey were doing a lot of it... there are rightways and wrong ways to show data; thereare displays that reveal the truth and dis-plays that do not.”

Simply put, Morton Thiokol engineerswere pretty sure that seven astronautswere going to die the next morning—theyjust couldn’t find a good way to explain it.

Survey documents, of course, are onlyoccasionally a matter of life and death but

they are always a matter of wealth andproperty, not unimportant topics. And it iscertainly possible to prepare these docu-ments badly, in ways that obscure thetruth and lead to bad decisions, and argu-ments, and court battles, and lifelongfeuds. It is possible to do good research,good fieldwork, and good reasoning, andthen to present all that good work badly,in ways that obscure truth and cause pain.

Ultimately, the real worth of these threebooks is in showing that the mundanetasks of our profession, of any profession,also deserve attention, that they can bedone with excellence or thoughtlessness.In a word, they inspire.

New PerspectivesLook around you. Unless you are readingthis during a backpacking trip—and some-times even then—there are probably sever-al dozen examples of informational textsand graphics within your field of view.They may be as simple as an exit sign, oras complex as a subdivision plat. Whendone badly, they create confusion andstress, when done well, our world is afriendlier, saner place. Reading these threemasterpieces (and the forthcomingBeautiful Evidence) gives one a new dimen-sion by which to measure the world.Reading the daily paper becomes a muchricher experience, and often a more aggra-vating one. So many graphs and chartsare just so incredibly bad—they lie, to putit bluntly.

I can remember my beginning birdwatching days—I suddenly began to seeabout twice as many varieties of birds,right in my own neighborhood. I was sen-sitized to bird varieties. These books havesensitized me to informative graphics—examples leap out at me now. Thankfully,there are good examples, as well as bad.described object as data points. A complexidea is conveyed succinctly.

The thing is, our world is coated withsymbols—and has been for some time.Man, the symbol-manipulating animal,has remade his environment into aplace of symbols. Charts and dia-grams have long been used to suc-cinctly convey complex ideas (as in

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Figures 2a, 2b

Figure 3 This 1695 illustration from page 55 of Systema Saturnium, by ChristiaanHuygens, instantly resolved decades of speculation about the curiously morphingshape of Saturn as observed by astronomers. It applies several of the principlesdefined by Tufte, and is cited by him as proof that good data, excellently displayed,is timeless. Top: Huygens’ diagram of how Saturn’s appearance to us changes dueto the changing positions of the Earth (E) and Saturn as they orbit the Sun (G).Bottom: Huygens’s observation of Saturn presenting its rings to us at their greatestinclination. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Dibner Library forthe History of Science and Technology, Washington, D.C.

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Figure 3). Expertise in symbol decod-ing is now a survival skill, just as track-ing and hunting once were. Symbols aremisused constantly, often intentionally,in ways that lie and propagandize.There are professionals, for example,that specialize in courtroom displaysthat subtly slant the truth, and there areentire firms that provide propagandizinggraphics to advertisers and politicalcampaigns. Given the right tools, we areless likely to be taken in by visual lies,which means we are less likely to buythe wrong product or vote for thewrong man. If the symbol doesn’t fit,we will not acquit.

When I read through the paragraphsabove, I fear that I have trivializedTufte, made it sound as if he is obsessedwith minutiae such as font weight. He isobsessed by font weight, but his realobsession is much grander—truth. Howcan the truth be told with symbols?

How can we keep from lying, and beinglied to?

One of Tufte’s recent causes is the near-ly ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation. Hebelieves—and demonstrates—that, “...thepopular PowerPoint templates (ready-madedesigns) usually weaken verbal and spatialreasoning, and almost always corrupt statisti-cal analysis.” And he has much more tosay about what he calls, “the cognitivestyle of Power- Point.” So here his obses-sion with truth is asking a sort of ultimatequestion—how do we keep from lying toourselves? When one realizes that millionsof copies of PowerPoint are being used toproduce millions and millions of slides, itsuddenly becomes clear that the issue isnot at all trivial.

Learning MoreThe obvious way to learn more aboutTufte and his work is to read the threebooks cited. They are still self-publishedby his own company, Graphics Pressand are available on Amazon and else-where. They are not cheap, $40-50, butare reasonable compared to art books ortextbooks. Also, www.edwardtufte.comcollects his shorter work and is a rich

reference site—its forum, “Ask E.T.” is agenuine resource for intelligent discus-sion of problems in information presentation.

Tufte regularly gives one-day semi-nars, which I highly recommend. Iattended one in Chicago and met theman himself. He is an engaging speaker,clearly brilliant and not especially mod-est, but very generous and energetic inhis presentation. He takes questions anduses visual aids almost constantly. Ahighlight for me was seeing an originaledition of Galileo’s Starry Skies, passedaround by a latex-gloved assistant.

A Call for Good ExamplesIt is my hope that this column becomes anexchange, and not a one-way conduit ofinformation. To that end, I will be callingfor examples and occasionally instituting acontest. In this case, I am asking for exam-ples, from boundary maps, of quantitativeinformation excellently (and innovatively)displayed. Please send or e-mail yourexamples to me, care of The AmericanSurveyor. Some of the best will be featuredin future issues. Suggestions for futurecolumns are also appreciated.

Everything is SomewhereContinued from page 43

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