Data Junkie

[crisper]

Home sick today. Hopefully later, will do some long-overdue writing, but for now I'm reading. Last week, Edward Tufte came through the Bay Area with his lecture course on presentation of data and, in support of some project-related stuff that's going on, I convinced work to send me. Part of the course fee covers copies of all four of his books, and

Comments

[stutefish]

I'm so jealous!

How is Beautiful Evidence?

[crisper]

Beautiful, evidently! (BE is the book I'm most already-familiar-with, as I've seen the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint and sparkline material before.)

[bruellaffe]

I hear ya. I've read all about roll cages, suspensions, and now I'm jonesing for this to read on a rainy day:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0837601606/ref=sib_dp_pt/105-8792185-1201224#reader-link

[crisper]

I think Envisioning Information is my favorite of the four for just idly flipping through. It even has a foldable pop-up triangle-into-tetrahedron model in the book, in reference to a similar model that was in a 1570 translation of Euclid-- an original copy of which he happened to own, so he showed it around to the audience while talking. "Here's a 430 year old book that solved the problem of showing 3D objects on paper, and the model still works perfectly even today."

I hope someday, I can afford to collect original editions of books from the Renaissance.

[crisper]

It seems like he was largely working in sequential order of publication, in the order of stuff he's been famous for-- starting with the Minard graphic, etc. and bringing in sparklines and Powerpoint at the end.