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Some of the stuff in there is very good, and some is at the level of "chartjunk" as Edward Tufte calls it in his also very good series of books about graphical
by supernova87a 5y ago
Some of the stuff in there is very good, and some is at the level of "chartjunk" as Edward Tufte calls it in his also very good series of books about graphical display of data. (his books are also worth a read)
(Chartjunk = plots or charts where flowery or gratuitous graphical embellishments, like the octopus, simply obscure the data being presented)
I am actually most surprised by the fact that a book was able to be produced with so many graphics at that time. I would have thought that such graphics were incredibly expensive or prohibitive to put in a book until later in the 1900s. I don't know why but I just had that impression.
- kd5bjo 5y agoThe "chartjunk" here is generally presented as a counterexample. The octopus on p. 20, for instance, is explicitly called out in the caption as problematic because you can't accurately see the data. For another example, you can take a look at page 39. You'd probably consider Fig. 40 to be "chartjunk," but it's there to contrast with Fig. 41, which shows the same information in a much better way.
- dtagames 5y agoI would say a careful read of the actual text suggests that most of the examples are intentional chartjunk, with great commentary on why they should be thought of that way. In total, this book is very much like Tufte with as many bad examples as good -- on purpose.