Distilling the Essential Principles of Data Visualization — Part 1
A Survey of “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” by Edward R. Tufte.
Edward R. Tufte is a famous American statistician and professor who is recognized as a pioneering individual in the field of data visualization. This article is meant as a summary and review of his foundational book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It is the first in a two-part series and focuses on the three main topics presented in Section 1 of the book: 1) Graphical Excellence, 2) Graphical Integrity, and 3) Sources of Graphical Integrity and Sophistication.
Let’s dive right in.
Graphical Excellence
Tufte’s main point in this chapter, and indeed, throughout his book, is a simple, unifying philosophy: the purpose of data graphics is to take complex ideas and transform them into precise and clear visualizations. Put more colloquially, he argues that a picture is worth 1000 words — but only if done correctly. Good graphical displays, he argues, should reflect the following key ideas:
- They should show the data.
- They should encourage the user to think about the substance of the data.
- They should make large datasets…
