Books in Brief: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward R. Tufte (Graphics Press, 197 pp., $34)

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is like a stunningly beautiful woman who does calculus: unlikely but delightful. Edward R. Tufte is a professor of political science and statistics at Yale. Out of this interesting combination, he has made himself one of the country’s leading specialists on graphs and charts, serving as a consultant to CBS, NBC, the New York Times, Newsweek, and various government agencies. Mr. Tufte believes that well-designed graphs are “of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information . . . usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful.” This exquisitely designed book summarizes the history of data graphics, presents Mr. Tufte’s theory of what constitutes a good graph, and contains a chamber of horrors: forty “graphical lies” culled from the pages of various distinguished publications—most notably the Washington Post and the New York Times —whose distortions are crisply indicted by Mr. Tufte. (“At the core of the preoccupation with deceptive graphics,” he writes with a revivalist’s fervor, “was the assumption that data graphics were mainly devices for showing the obvious to the ignorant.”) Mr. Tufte also reprints what he considers to be the best graphs ever designed—for example, the 1861 “tableau graphique” drawn by Charles Joseph Minard to illustrate the fate of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of the most elegant coffeetable books ever published—and certainly the most intelligent coffee-table book imaginable. Mr. Tufte’s magnum opus is available directly from Graphics Press, Box 430, Cheshire, Conn. 06410.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

Featured Tags

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward R. Tufte (Graphics Press, 197 pp., $34)

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is like a stunningly beautiful woman who does calculus: unlikely but delightful. Edward R. Tufte is a professor of political science and statistics at Yale. Out of this interesting combination, he has made himself one of the country’s leading specialists on graphs and charts, serving as a consultant to CBS, NBC, the New York Times, Newsweek, and various government agencies. Mr. Tufte believes that well-designed graphs are “of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information . . . usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful.” This exquisitely designed book summarizes the history of data graphics, presents Mr. Tufte’s theory of what constitutes a good graph, and contains a chamber of horrors: forty “graphical lies” culled from the pages of various distinguished publications—most notably the Washington Post and the New York Times —whose distortions are crisply indicted by Mr. Tufte. (“At the core of the preoccupation with deceptive graphics,” he writes with a revivalist’s fervor, “was the assumption that data graphics were mainly devices for showing the obvious to the ignorant.”) Mr. Tufte also reprints what he considers to be the best graphs ever designed—for example, the 1861 “tableau graphique” drawn by Charles Joseph Minard to illustrate the fate of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of the most elegant coffeetable books ever published—and certainly the most intelligent coffee-table book imaginable. Mr. Tufte’s magnum opus is available directly from Graphics Press, Box 430, Cheshire, Conn. 06410.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.