Status Updates From The Visual Display of Quant...

very clean and pleasing epilogue page. "Design is choice. The theory of the visual display of quantitative information consists of principles that generate design options and that guide choices among options... What is to be sought... is the clear portrayal of complexity."

very interesting concept of "sparklines", or "datawords: data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics"

an obsession with "data density" - how many numbers can you show per square centimeter? getting into "small multiples" territory - "small multiples are an excellent architecture for showing large quantities of multivariate data." some excellent examples, i particularly like the use of small multiples like frames of a movie. also appreciate his encouragement to shrink graphics as much as possible

"Graphics can be designed to have at least three viewing depths: (1) what is seen from a distance, an overall structure usually aggregated from an underlying microstructure; (2) what is seen up close and in detail, the fine structure of the data; and (3) what is seen implicitly, underlying the graphic - that which is behind the graphic." Exemplar: US Census where each dot represents 500 people

"Color often generates graphical puzzles... the mind's eye does not readily give a visual ordering to colors... Because they do have a natural visual hierarchy, varying shades of gray show varying quantities better than color." shoutout to all my architecture profs who complained about my use of color

"... automatic, and implicit - so that the visual image flows right *through* the verbal decoder initially necessary to understand the graphic. As Paul Valery wrote, 'Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.'"

Skimming along but this page really gets me. "A sure sign of a puzzle is that the graphic must be interpreted through a verbal rather than a visual process... Over and over, the viewers must run little phrases through their minds, trying to maintain the right pattern of words to make sense out of the visual montage... by contrast, in a non-puzzle graphic, the translation of visual to verbal is quickly learned...

completed "data-maximization" chapter - nice to read through some recommended changes to conventional charts. get a sense of his design thinking and the way to strive for clarity & concision

just got to a chapter called "Chartjunk." ha! skimming/skipping because i can get the gist of it just from flipping through the pages. probably the most interesting intersection with architectural drawings (line weights!!! gray grids! the cover graphic of the train timetable looks AMAZING graygridded) - there's even a quote from robert venturi/denise scott brown about the decorated duck.

(but also avoid redundancy - within reason! for example, wiping off half of the Chernoff face...)

laughed at his "lie factor" ratio earlier, but the "data-ink" ratio is pretty interesting. "above all else show the data", as efficiently as possible

just skimmed- "graphical competence demands three quite different skills: the substantive, statistical, and artistic." leaving it to the artist to create statistical graphs is "almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose. Substantive and quantitative expertise must also participate in the design of data graphics"

Chapter on graphical integrity - mostly on how not to lie or be otherwise deceptive with graphical representations. Mostly straightforward - don't represent 1-d data with multiple dimensions, use deflated and standardized units for time-series displays of money, don't quote data out of context...

"Tables usually outperform graphics in reporting on small data sets of 20 numbers or less. The special power of graphics comes in the display of large data sets."

"Graphical excellence consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency... gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space."

Birth of relational graphics in ~1765 by Lambert - seems like a no-brainer, but 2-dimensional graphs...

3 examples of successful time/space narratives: Minard's Napoleon march in Russia, McRae's air pollution chart, life cycle of the Japanese beetle

EJ Marey's visual time series: horse galloping, starfish turning itself over, gecko, and (my favorite) man in black velvet running