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Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative | 
 enlarge | Author: Edward R. Tufte
Publisher: Graphics Press
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy Used: $16.50
You Save: $28.50 (63%)
New (32) Used (56) Collectible (19) from $16.50
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 9465
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 156
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 13.7 x 9.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0961392126
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23
EAN: 9780961392123
ASIN: 0961392126
Publication Date: February 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
With Visual Explanations, Edward R. Tufte adds a third volume to his indispensable series on information display. The first, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which focuses on charts and graphs that display numerical information, virtually defined the field. The second, Envisioning Information, explores similar territory but with an emphasis on maps and cartography. Visual Explanations centers on dynamic data--information that changes over time. (Tufte has described the three books as being about, respectively, "pictures of numbers, pictures of nouns, and pictures of verbs.") Like its predecessors, Visual Explanations is both intellectually stimulating and beautiful to behold. Tufte, a self-publisher, takes extraordinary pains with design and production. The book ranges through a variety of topics, including the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (which could have been prevented, Tufte argues, by better information display on the part of the rocket's engineers), magic tricks, a cholera epidemic in 19th-century London, and the principle of using "the smallest effective difference" to display distinctions in data. Throughout, Tufte presents ideas with crystalline clarity and illustrates them in exquisitely rendered samples.
Product Description
Describes design strategies - the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers - for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause, and effect. Examines the logic of depicting quantitative evidence.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Of little practical value December 2, 2008
Easy Writer
This book was not what I expected, or needed. I was looking for an expert guide on HOW to create clear graphics that communicate ideas, tell a story, and so on. Instead, this book (and all of Tufte's book) have the luxurious, plodding, self-indulgent pace and haughty language of the ivory tower of academia.
Imagine someone wants to learn football. They buy a book that, rather than teaching the three-point stance or how to run a hook pattern, instead shows grainy black and white photos of rugby players and explains that football originated in Wales in 1883. Then it shows pictures of leather helmets and some more grainy shots of the Yale football team from 1920 and so on. Rather than learning HOW to play football, you are taken on a quaint exploration of how football started.
This was my experience reading Tufte's book. I was completely disappointed with his writing style and lack of practical guidance. From the reviews, it appears others have gotten more from the book than I did, because they were willing to spend time pondering Tufte's examples. But for myself, I found Stephen Few's book "Information Dashboard Design" covers the material much more comprehensively and - most important to me - practically than Tufte did.
I'll be returning my Tufte history books for a full refund.
 Learn the life-or-death value of visual explanations August 22, 2008
Todd Stockslager (Raleigh, NC)
Third of the series of Tufte's brilliantly-done graphic design and quantitative analysis guides, this one focuses on images that provide "Visual Explanations." These images can show quantities, least significant differences, parallels, and explanations in ways that enhance and exceed text or numerical table data.
As usual, the book is lavishly illustrated with examples painstakingly reproduced and clearly printed on high-quality paper. Tufte's books feel and look classic and classy. They are a delight to any reader who loves books as objects. In short, Tufte follows his own rules in his books.
He devotes the lengthiest chapter of the book to a positive and a negative example of why clear visual explanations are so important, indeed life-or-death. His positive example is John Snow's map of London showing the location of deaths in the last great outbreak of cholera in that city in 1854. This map, visually displaying the evidence he gained from interviews, reviews of medical records, and meetings with city government leaders, helped Snow pinpoint the probable source of the cholera, and saved many lives--how many is still an open and unsolvable question which Tufte examines by showing some refactoring of Snow's visual explanations. You can read more about this amazing man Snow and his triumph in The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson.
The negative example is the US Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, where hastily assembled tabular data and visual explanations by the engineers who designed the rockets was unable to stop the launch at the last moment. As Tufte clearly shows, pulling from that tabular and visual data, plus others presented during the follow-up hearings, better visual explanations would have illuminated the causal relationship between air temperature and O-ring failure, caused that cold-morning launch to be delayed for warmer weather, and saved the lives of the seven astronauts on the Challenger.
In sum, it is a joy to learn the value of visual explanation from Tufte's books.
Great book August 11, 2008
Deepak Gupta
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First time I read the book I thought it is waste of money but after analyzing it further I believe that this is one of rarest book that is solely based on application rather then theory. I can relate day to day application with examples specified in book. this has also helped me to gain praises from my boss at work.
P.S: This book is not a novel/story-bookyou need to spend some time thinking also.
another great book by Tufte on graphs February 6, 2008
Michael R. Chernick (Holland PA)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
In this third book by Tufte on graphics, he provides great examples through history where good pictures conveyed important information to decision makers and bad graphics left uncetainty and indecision. A great success story is the identification of the source of the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s. With regard to the Challenger Space Shuttle, Tufte suggests that one good picture may have convinced the NASA engineers of the need to avoid launching at low temperatures. Great pictures, great examples and great advice are found throughout the book. You may not believe that graphs can be used to answer all scientific questions but Tufte will convince you that they are important and must be done right!
Many good examples of illustrations August 19, 2007
Yoda (Hadera, Israel)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Many excellent examples on conveying many types of quantitative data across a wide variety of subjects. The only problem is that, to create most of these, one must be a graphic artist. If one needs to convey highly technical quantitative information, especially to layman, this gives the reader a good idea/perspective of how to explain to graphic artists hired along what general lines an illustration should be made.
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