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Edward Tufte Visits Boston

Posted: November 11, 2009
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Author: Adam
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Filed under: Uncategorized, Young Professonal
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Tags: Boston, Conference, Edward Tufte

Yesterday I had the unique opportunity to take in a one day course from Edward Tufte; author, professor, designer, sculptor, and statistician. Tufte has established himself as an authority in the world of graphical presentation of data. As we at Visible Measures present all kinds of data in a variety of ways, this course was very relevant and exciting.

A continuous theme of Tufte’s course was about how the majority of us get thwarted into selling ourselves and our audience short by utilizing the most over-used and under-scrutinized tool in presentation history, Power Point. Tufte would use this context to drive his point from a variety of subjects.

Don’t be afraid to show a lot of data

Edward had a great point in that so many Americans (80 million) read/absorb/understand the sports page on the way to work, usually in under 15 minutes; yet, when it comes time to showcase a data set we tend to limit ourselves to only a handful of numbers. “People don’t turn stupid once they get to work”, he said a few times

“There is no such thing as ‘information overload’ only poor presentation.” What may seem overwhelming or too detailed can often grab your audience by the belt and leave them hanging on your every word. Tufte took this point to discuss the need to “respect your audience”. Chances are if people are listening to you give a presentation they share enough commonality with you to understand and appreciate what most consider “information overload”. Again, if people can take in a sports page no problem, they can probably swallow your quarterly sales breakdown.

Presentation Basics

We all got the basics in high school or college presentation classes but Edward’s main points are much more relevant for todays’s world. Some main points I took from this part of the course were…

Find good examples and copy them: “Talent immitates, genuis steals” – T.S. Elliot. Tufte used this as a mantra for guidence when presenting data. Chances are there is some stunning visualization technique that someone else has created, why not use it? Would you rather succeed in presenting all your data in a relevant and consumable fashion with a copied graphical format or fail with a uselsess graph after trying to reinvent the wheel?
Credibility: Using detail and giving specific context will establish you as an authority instead of being written off by a dime-a-dozen “fluff” artist.
Use a “super-graphic”: This was a term he used to describe a “high-resolution” image at the beginning of your presentation (perhaps in a handout) as a way to engage your audience, as these images are highly interactive. Here’s an example, feel free to click through.

Napoleon's March on Russia

I could go on for a long time re-hashing this 5 hour course, but in the interested of short attention spans caused by the interent I will save both you and me. One cool thing Tufte also noted several times is that all of this course is available on his website and he has all kinds of resources for you to dig into and collaborate on.

Cool Quotes & Sidenotes

During the presentation he showed us two books. One, a first edition book by Gelileo, which contains the only place where Galileo comes out and says the Earth rotates, the other a first edition of the english translation of Euclid’s geometry text printed on 1570.
At one point he said, “Only a monopoly could blame their customers” when describing Microsoft’s stance that Power Point is not the problem, but the people using power Point.

And in true Tufte fashion, here is the course, in graphical representation…