#edwardtufte

Edward Tufte

"Enthusiasts, partisans, and liars have long tinkered with graphical evidence by dequantifying images, selecting and hyping advantageous visual effects, distorting data...Consider this helpful rescaling, a solution to the problem of the aspect ratio [of x- to y-axis scales] in statistical displays...Choose an aspect ratio that centers the absolute values of the slopes of selected line segments on 45 degrees, a technique implemented by iterative computing. Applying this method to sun spot data yields the graph at bottom, which reveals that cycles tend to rise rapidly and decline slowly...From the original spiky mass of data, fresh and subtle information about quantities emerges with a radiant clarity in the rescaled image."

"The grid [in the last post] resembles the tiled pavement patterns of Renaissance paintings that exaggerate perspective recession and appear in the most improbably circumstances: '...the stable at Bethlehem often boasts a decorative floor, and Saint John finds a small area of tiled paving to stand on in the the wilderness.'...Perhaps...trendy new technologies of three-dimensional display--perspective drawing in the 1500s and supercomputer animations in the 1990s--led to these over-exuberant tiles and grids that disrupt the unity of content. In this stable at Bethlehem, complete with ox and donkey, the tiles are merely inappropriate and unintentionally humorous; for the storm, however, the tremendous grid aggrandizes geometric perspective."

This classic scientific visualization [top] leaves several questions unanswered: "How big is that cloud? What direction is it moving? What are the dimensions of the grid? These fundamentals of scale, orientation, and labels--routine in maps and statistical graphics--are often missing in the colorful images emanating from computer visualizations. In one scholarly compilation (19 articles, 43 authors) of supercomputer scientific animations, 65% of the 134 color images published had not scaled oar labeled dimensions at all..." The redesign [bottom] locates the storm within a tree-dimensional tripod of scales and directional arrows...The small, still spatial sequence of images provides a context for the large, moving, temporal sequence above."