Name: Beautiful Evidence
ISBN: 9780961392178

Beautiful Evidence

Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates visual information. Beautiful Evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how data and evidence turn into explanation. The book identifies excellent and effective methods for showing nearly every kind of information, suggests many new designs (including sparklines), and provides analytical tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations (which are seen from both sides: how to produce and how to consume presentations). For alert consumers of presentations, there are chapters on diagnosing evidence corruption and PowerPoint pitches. Beautiful Evidence concludes with two chapters that leave the world of pixel and paper flatland representations - and move onto seeing and thinking in space land, the real-land of three-space and time. Edward Rolf Tufte (born 1942 in Kansas City, Missouri to Virginia and Edward E. Tufte), a professor emeritus of statistics, graphic design, and political economy at Yale University has been described by The New York Times as "the Leonardo da Vinci of Data". He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. Tufte currently resides in Cheshire, Connecticut.

What Hacker News says

philsnowFeb 2025

The first image jumped out at me because the author chose to use blue and red which, when used on a map of the United States always indicates political affiliation, but the areas that were marked "red" and "blue" were reversed from what my expectation was (coasts and cities red, midwest + great plains blue).

> A county like San Francisco or New York, which packs thousands of residents into a small area, now stands out with an intense color saturation, drawing the eye immediately to where the people actually are. Conversely, a vast county with a sparse population adopts a lighter tone, accurately reflecting its lower density without the distraction of an oversized area.

(Emphasis on "saturation" added.) This isn't quite right, the most-densely populated hexes (large cities) are a pretty saturated red color yes, but the least-densely populated hexes (west Texas) are a pretty saturated blue color. In fact, this color palette makes it really difficult to see what the author intends.

> Using the size of counties as a dimension to represent population can also showcase population centers and free up the color dimension to show another dimension like population density.

Ok yeah that's a cartogram, I know how to expect that to look... wait, no, the image has the same center points for every county, a hexagon outline drawn around that, and then a confusingly-colored solid circle painted over each. The colors are confusing because the overwhelming effect is that the hex outlines dominate the perception of the dark blue nearly-point-sized "circles" in the majority of the map.

Look at Nevada. On the first map Clark County (where Las Vegas is) is a light blue colored hex in a state of mostly dark blue hexes and Washoe County (where Reno is) is light red. On the second map Clark is the largest light blue circle in the state and Washoe is a smaller light blue circle, which seems to be the reverse of what the first map says. ...Also, Washoe appears to be in a different place maybe? It seems to have moved north a hex.

I'm not just picking nits, this is difficult stuff, but an extremely powerful way to convey a ton of densely-packed (no pun intended) information, when done right. See, for instance [0][1][2][3] all by Edward Tufte.

[0] "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...

[1] "Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0961392126

[2] "Beautiful Evidence" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0961392177

[3] "Envisioning Information" https://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tuft...

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mikehollingerApr 2024

You might want to read Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence.[1] He discusses stuff like what you brought up about readability and distracting from the message / point of the data.

If you've seen sparklines, [2] Tufte coined the term.

Whenever I do a UI review I end up paging through it just to see if there's something we're not thinking about, and its an interesting book to just open to a random page and read.

Plus he has an entire treatise on why PowerPoint is terrible.

[1] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_be

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline

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azeirahApr 2017

Godel Escher Bach is fairly bible-ish if you ask me

Another set of books I consider to be "one" bible are Edward Tufte's (1) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (2) Envisioning Information, (3) Visual Explanations and (4) Beautiful Evidence.

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rodionosDec 2015

There is lies and there is statistics :). For more reading on the subject, I recommend Beautiful Evidence by E. Tufte. He's a classic when it comes to infoviz.

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toothbrushOct 2015

If you like this type of thing, you should probably take a look at Tufte's book ‘Beautiful Evidence’. It contains these images too, along with a whole lot of opinions.

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hsmyersJul 2013

The Design of Everyday Things: Donald A. Norman

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte

Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumache

The Art of Color by Johannes Itten

Were I to teach a course, that would be the list of text books required (so you would own them after). First and only assignment---read them. Final and only exam---what did you learn and understand. Supply proof.

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