Beautiful Evidence

The book goes to great lengths to explain the power and impact of visual imagery on the human mind. This type of psychological information can be valuable for many people in many different fields of expertise. The amount that it covers can be a bit over-bearing if you want to look at specifics to your own specific requirement, best to let it "wash over you" and distill out the key elements of interest afterwards. An interesting book...

Edward Tufte is a Yale political scientist turned information architect who brings 1500 years of analytic design together (including the histories of science and art) to create a very unique presentation that ET delivers in person each year to packed houses in large cities. He is known for his intense criticism of PowerPoint and his work on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board that catapulted him to fame alongside Richard P. Feynmann, who said [about the Challenger Disaster], "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled (p.168)."

Beautiful Evidence has nine chapters (Mapped Pictures; Sparklines; Links and Causal Arrows; Words, Numbers Images; Fundamental Principles of Analytic Design; Corruption in Evidence Presentations; Cognitive Style of PowerPoint; Sculptural Pedestals; and Landscape Sculptures) and, although all of the chapters are not uniformly strong (notably Sparklines and both of the Sculptures), two of them (Fundamental Principles and Corruption) are better than anything you could find anywhere else. It's content that you would want undergraduates to take away with them.

Beautiful Evidence is Tufte's greatest hits volume and last year I used it to teach table and figure making and even paper writing to undergraduate Digital Technology and Culture majors at Washington State University, emphasizing practice rather than theory. As in each of Tufte's books, figures, tables, maps, cartoons, paintings, photos, and illustrations from 1500 years of human history stand alongside one another to illustrate such design principles as to escape flatland by adding scales, diagrams, overlays, numbers, words, and images to make "mapped pictures" to document and present evidence, to skillfully use arrows to suggest cause, and to show skepticism whenever stumbling onto official reports that use the passive voice or the bullet-list format (pp.142-3).

Although I had taught Tufte's Envisioning Information to undergraduates for years, there were lessons for me in bringing Beautiful Evidence to a group of undergraduates, as there seemed to be a minority that despised Tufte for his standards, his moral imperative that evidence presentation is a moral act as well as an intellectual activity, and his emphasis on historical precedent--in short, things that all educators and librarians hold dear. One student called it "a picture book for adults" that contained commonsense stuff that everyone knew. And, although there may be some truth here, the good thing about Tufte is that he is all about showing the design principles that the world doesn't have to reinvent but simply carry forward.

Additionally, Beautiful Evidence has (at least) two other bonuses for undergraduate students, its comparison of PowerPoint with other methods of presenting information and its utter skewering of a book that presents a study of artists' paintings and value (pp.148-9) that was published by a Cambridge, MA publisher. Both offer great Tufte lessons. Energized undergraduates will argue against Tufte's condemnation of PowerPoint by saying that it is a more dynamic tool than Tufte makes it out to be because the "pitch" has a place in modern life. Tufte's skillful analysis of the study of artist's paintings (that illustrates a new term, economisting, with accents on the con and mist) will seem even more amazing after checking the book out over Amazon to discover all the favorable reviews associated with it.

Whether Beautiful Evidence is an introduction to Edward Tufte's work or simply the latest in a successful string of four books, readers will find something of interest. New readers will discover an explosion of beautiful, colorful-but-integrated content and seasoned readers will find what has come to be Tufte's style: a minimalist, no-nonsense text where the references are elevated to a place of honor along the right-hand side of the page and the images take center stage.

While a Tufte fan for 10 years, this seemed to be a rehash of the same...was expecting more visuals...I bought this sight unseen--will not do that again from him.

This book covers the gamut of the published works of Isaac Newton, the review of the Challenger Disaster ( A telling indictment of PowerPoint) and a review of where PowerPoint fails badly in so many ways ( yes he does not care for it) through to how public sculpture should be displayed. A wonderful and eclectic book. Recommended if you truly want to be a better communicator. Plus this book on your coffee table will make people think you are really smart.

Tufte's work is fun to look at, thought provoking, opinionated, and not usually very practical to apply. This book was a bit disappointing. The preachy section on power point was annoying and unhelpful, since many of us do have to present structured talks and cannot compose a Lincoln speech or create graphics like Pravda. A chapter about how to use powerpoint creatively and effectively would be more useful than an anti-Microsoft diatribe and read almost like a conspiracy theory.

There is little here that was not in Tufte's previous, amazingly good, books on graphics and information design. Napoleon goes to Moscow? Powerpoint? Yep, seen those before. Observations on baseball and art do make up for a lack of something to say.

All three of the previous books are strongly recommended, this one is redundant. Wouldn't Tufte want you to recognize that?

This is yet another amazing Tufte publication. Consistent with Tufte's earlier publications, this book is composed beautifully, in terms of the quality of paper stock, ink and clarity. The book is as much a work of art as a treatise on the principles of evidence and analytical design.

"Beautiful Evidence" codifies a number of principles laid out in earlier Tufte publications, such as those of analytical design, as well as extends Tufte's unique perspective into topics such as Sparklines.

For those interested in optimizing the presentation of information...and recognizing when information may be presented in a manner that should raise questions and concerns, there is no better source than Dr. Edward Tufte, in my opinion.

I attended one of Dr. Tufte's day-long seminars a number of years ago and found his "in person" explanation of presenting and interpreting information to be exceptionally good. As such, I highly recommend both this book and Dr. Tufte's seminar to all readers.

Yes it is indeed a sad enterprise when an author--runs out of steam. Begins to repeat; begins to dilute. A near-universal in visual art, also in literature. Mark Twain's early travel books ran dynamic, rich--but then at least one later work slowed to show results of fatigue and the end of inspiration. We can call it an issue of Specific Gravity. What is the amount of material compared to the word-count? One speaks of "op-ed books" today, full-length treatments whose gist and essence could have been presented in, say, 1000 words.

Edward Tufte's invaluable first three books show this proportionate packing with material. Just possibly, this fourth and latest book--shows dilution, watering-down, inappropriate repetition. At least one other reviewer has made this point; I suspect so.

But let's accentuate the positives of Tufte's vision--even if imperfectly presented here. New here (among good stuff such as "sparklines") is the indispensable attempt at explicating universal principles of design. Above the Concrete Particulars, the flux of graphs, charts, pictures, etc., what Conceptual Principles can guide us? And the half-dozen issues he identifies, are helpful.

However, the presentation of them is not. Tufte employs Menard's famous graphic of Napoleon's 1811 Russian campaign to illustrate the principles. However, in terms of sheer Information Elucidation, two errors seem to occur.

First, number of examples. To convey difficult concept, more than one example, illustration, instance is needed. We lack a "rounded ensemble" (in my system's terminology) of several and varied instances to better cinch the point. Example: someone trying to convey the idea of a map as more than just an image of the earth's surface, of presenting knowledge, referenced chromosome maps in genetics, weather maps in meteorology, animal range maps in zoology, magnetic field maps in geology, and wiring diagrams in engineering. [Geographer Peter Gould is even better in elucidating how maps are not terrestrial but conceptual, representing relationships between things. He references "maps" of emotional states of married couples, South Pacific geobotanically, New Zealand "in changing aircost space," intellectual winds blowing through psychology journals, my gosh, world journalism, Shakespeare, influenza...] Bravo, a rounded ensemble cinches the concept with polypod footings. Too bad Tufte fell short here as the multiple instances ploy is actually similar to Tufte's own excellent tactic of "Small Multiples."

Second, comparison/contrast, or rather,Tufte's non-use of this keystone principle of thinking-writing-communicating. Only the excellent Menard graphic is shown; he should have either shown a bad attempt by another of the same subject, or created a "ruined" version also of Menard's, given a flawed example. This dualism for each of his universal principles. One thinks of Tufte's own dictum, statistics always asks, "compared to what?" Or, "He who knows not a foreign country knows nothing of his own." Or, to teach freshmen students good qualities of poetry, give a first draft or inferior poem on the same subject as well as Yeats' excellent final-draft "The Old Pensioner." Or give even a triad: as in, a too-lightly- inked graphic, a just-right density, and then an over-inked graphic.

So much for better elucidation of Key Principles. This is more important than the issue of irrelevant items, such as the issues of introductions and of sculptures. A little charity here; it's hard to exclude one's own enthusiasms. But Convergence to Point is also a principle of good communication.

"At least a quintet [of books] is projected," states Tufte. But let him await the wellspring re-filling itself with Heavy Water, not diluted dew. And please use comparison-contrast and multiple examples to cinch point.

As always Professor Tufte's work in this area just continues to astound me. I have read- and re-read - the other works and this is arguably the most succinct and tight one yet. It operates equally well from 30,000 feet as it does through a macro lens....very well laid out, beautifully executed and remarkable approachable for a wide range of professionals outside the design and graphics industry.

This fourth book in Tufte's series on visual information resembles a disappointing B-sides/greatest hits collection instead of an essential new work. It includes a full reprint of Tufte's recent PowerPoint pamphlet and frequent discussion of topics from earlier books (for example Minard's chart of Napoleon's march into Russia). The final chapter on Tufte's sculptures seems especially misplaced. New material includes exploration of Sparklines, word-sized graphs interspersed among normal text. In the Graphics Press tradition of superior aesthetics, this book contains richly printed images and text on thick paper.
I'd strongly recommend the previous three books in the series, esp. the first one 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information'. Those who already own those three works can probably skip this new volume.

If I had gone into a brick and mortar store and thumbed through the pages of this book I would never have purchased it. I'm sorry I just don't get all this artsy type fluff that everyone seems to be so "Tufte-Gong-Ho" about. I was expecting a book from a professional business perspective on insights on how to represent various types of data in the correct visual format. One look at the table of contents gives you the impression that's exactly what this book is. However, when you look at the actual contents, you have pictures and artwork that would never make it in a professional boardroom. The examples are just plain terrible and you would think someone as good as Tufte would be able to represent and communicate concepts in a better format instead of getting nostalgic with historical artwork. Do I really care about David Smith's Cubi XXVI (1965) sculptural volumes! Oh and the slave trade ship pictures on pages 22-23 are a nice touch. Give me a break; I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what the point of those pictures were in explaining a concept. I just hope I can resell this book and try to recover half the price I paid for it. If you are in corporate America trying to make a living adding value to your company's bottom line, skip this book.

This book should be reviewed by anyone who writes reports or gives presentations. I especially like the author's views on corruption of data and facts.

Tufte makes some excellent points about information design. The material on PowerPoint alone makes it worth buying this book. The book isn't as comprehensive as his earlier volumes.

As one reviewer astutley notes, this beautiful book is a little short on new evidence. If you own his three previous books, there's very little compelling about purchasing this one. Ironically, if you are new to Tufte, this may be his most accessible book to date as he covers several of his pet-peeves - including a scathing condemnation of NASA and PowerPoint.

I own all four of his larger works because I feel his attention to printing detail makes his books closer to art than literature. That said, I do wish the good Doctor would venture into some new territory.

This book is one many Tufte wrote concerning the usefull display of information. The graphs and pictures are amazing. The author describes both good and poor use of graphs and tables for displaying data. This book is a great tool for any one making reports or presentations with visual information.

I gave this to my son for Christmas. A splendid gift he said. He said it gave him points in the office. He is a Systems Engineer.
I, being a frugal person, have to satisfy myself with the Library. I have read all of Tufte's books repeatedly, and will probably continue to do so. However,anyone who would like to give me one or two or three is welcome to do so.
I have been struggling with the problem of presenting complicated ideas simply for years. I think Tufte is closer to the goal than most of us.

this was a gift for my father who is an artist and my step-mom who is a writer and literature professor, and they both went wild over the book. they said it was one of the most original, beautiful, intriguing books they'd ever seen.

I have long been a student of Tufte's, and the man has probably contributed more to the study of visual evidence than anyone.
Unfortunately, his continuing rant against a piece of software that was designed to help speakers less talented than he has become so overbearing as to overshadow his previous good works.

Dr. Tufte truly believes that one day, the wrong person will give the wrong PowerPoint presentation to the wrong audience, and the world will come to an end! He advocates having the World Police sieze all 300 million copies of PowerPoint around the globe and ban its use forever by internation treaty. If only the business world lived in the same fantasy universe as those blessed with a life in academia.

This book is mostly a collection of some very good material from his previous, stellar volumes, assembled as an excuse to get wider circulation for his diatribe on how PowerPoint is a totalitarian tool to make us all stupid. Tufte undoubtedly believes that inanimate objects such as guns and software can actually be evil themselves, without regard to the qualities of the users of such objects.

A great rebuttal to Tufte's ideas on where the evil lies can be found in the new book, 'And Your Point Is?' [available on Amazon], where one can find a great alternative rendering of the slide that Tufte claims killed the seven Columbia astronauts. At the end of the book, the author clearly demonstrates that using the same data, PowerPoint has the power to make overwhelmingly compelling arguments as long as the slide designer follows a few simple rules of visual design. As most of us in business will be stuck with PowerPoint for years to come, it's really better to learn how to use it effectively than to listen to another voice of unreason.

If you're considering this book, first check out his earlier three and take advantage of Tufte at his best.

Buy his other three books. This book is a rehash of older material. There are not enough new examples. I'm surprised he let it go to print. This is a very big disappointment for me.

Up to Tufte's outstanding level. A motherlode of information, tips, guidelines, magnificently and very appropriately illustrated.
Hardly ever does one come across such perfectly designed books.

this is definitely the best book I purchased last year, and I've been recommending it to co-workers and friends.

Of the three hardbound Tufte texts I've read this one goes down best. It's a beautiful volume, and despite the fact that I'd been introduced to sparklines in the other Tufte books, the concept sunk in with this book. Give this a try. From the way you design your spreadsheets to the fonts you might choose in a WORD document -- Tufte will influence how you express yourself. Whether your interests are technical or not, Tufte's disciplines and perspectives in how we express and perceive information will empower you to clearly and perhaps more importantly, gracefully express yourself. This is a delightful book -- a true "sleeper" in that it offers so much more than its commercial descriptions. If you really take your time and let this work sink in, people will notice -- whether those people are your boss or just friends.

Edward Tufte comes with a big attitude. Fourth edition of the same stinking book (pretty but stinky).

Wait a minute... Is he using irony on us? Write a pretty book with zero new ideas and insert a 30 page PowerPoint rant at the end. Was that some kind of inside joke? Comparing PowerPoint to Stalin? Oh yes!! HA HA, belly laugh! Now I get it. You are a sly old dog.

I was going to write a full review but the review above titled 'a disappointment" by Dan Farmer echoed my thoughts exactly. The clincher was when I saw the graphic "guide for visitors to Ise shrine" which was used so effectively in Envisioning Information. I'd like to see new material in a $50 book, even if the rationalization is that it is used in a different context.
I'm a big fan, and have used Envisioning Information as a teaching text, but this volume, although full of great images and interesting insights isn't in the same league.

Maurice Cornelius Escher was apparently wildly popular with mathematicians despite a total lack of any formal mathematical training. The examples that Edward Tufte uses to illustrate principals of visual excellence have that same intuitive appeal: it's clear they are both gorgeous and utilitarian even if the reasons why are not fully understood. Each of the 7 substantive chapters of "Beautiful Evidence" contains a range of delicious samples on a particular idea. My personal favorite is "sparklines", "intense, simple, word-sized graphics" that should be seamlessly incorporated into text. (Emoticons are a sort of sparkline.)

"Beauty will save the world" I recently saw emblazoned on a coffee house painting. Edward Tufte will teach us how. :)

This is a fitting companion to Tufte's three earlier books on presenting. Like the others, its construction is strong and physically beautiful. Its clear layout pervasively demonstrates its points about organization of visual data. In a few places, an image crosses the fold in the two-page spread; images bleed back to the binding, so the centermost part of the image is sometimes hard to read. That's my only criticism - please note how small a criticism it is.

Tufte uses this book to convey one large message: unite your text and imagery. They are a whole, and separating them damages the whole of your presentation. Trying to repair that damage causes even more problems - inept cross-referencing, erratic jumping between different parts of a book, and other bumbling stitchery that tries to repair the rent text.

Tufte offers many specific examples and suggestions for presenting the unified image. Since his writing demonstrates the density of information he proposes, and since it is too heavily visual for the review of this text to capture, I must direct you to the book itself to see what it's really about. The only section that I couldn't understand as part of a unified whole was the last chapter. Although its discussion of statuary and its pedestal relates clearly to Tufte's despised "chartjunk," his portfolio of his own large-scale sculpture seemed gratuitous - enjoyable, perhaps, but tangential and self-indulgent. That doesn't weaken any of his points, though. If you present complex ideas, you must have this book.

//wiredweird

ET is superb in showing the goods and the bads of showing facts in graphics (and text too: both combine to give the best result). Designers and Information Architects should all sleep with this book over their pillow, in order to take a grasp everytime a single turn in bed is needed... Specially those working for magazines and newspapers, which make so many mistakes in a single info-graphics (the NYT is an exception to this horror trend...).

I would highlight the Map on Losses of Napolean Troops. Read the explanation. Then copy it in a big format and hang it on the wall. The double page of the Shuttle's disaster is also a must.

Above all, this makes us, who just fire e-mails (some of them carrying a 'document' value), so small, in the sense that we have so much to learn still...

Thank you, ET!

This fourth Tufte title continues his themes of pairing image with text, focusing on how information can be transmitted graphically and focusing on 'sparklines': data-intense, word-like graphics. Perhaps it's impossible to adequately describe this concept using plain print: for more, you need to see BEAUTIFUL EVIDENCE, blending cartography, diagrams, science and art in a winning survey of measurement-based images.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I for one am the opposite of the people who read this and, as fans of Tufte's other works, felt let down. There seem to be a lot of complaints about recycled material. Yes, a lot of stuff in here is found in his other books. Yes, his whole Cognitive Style of PowerPoint pamphlet is reproduced here (I think?). No, I don't think that's a problem and in fact I think this is his best work ever.

I once owned Tufte's other three books, but sold them. They had no use to me, I found them to be a bit too... fluffy. But I picked up Beautiful Evidence and thought I had struck gold. A lot of his great ideas are concentrated, and yeah there's some fluff but he saves it for the end, where it belongs. I have actually put this book to serious, heavy use, which I cannot say for any of Tufte's other works.

Is this review helpful to all of you possible buyers? Probably not. If you loved his other works, you are likely to feel some disappointment at spending forty five bucks or so on stuff you already have. But if you didn't like Tufte before (and I know there's plenty of you out there) you might find a reason to now. It seems as if this is Tufte's way of streamlining his really good ideas for maximum usage. With a little fluff tossed in, of course.

I was disappointed by "Beautiful Evidence". It seems to me to be a medium primarily for the reproduction of many gorgeous drawings, graphs, and tables done by others and the author, and an opportunity to make a rant on PowerPoint. Yes, many bad figures have been created and Dr. Tufte has made valid points and good suggestions, but they are not as densely presented as one would expect from his own words.

One of Dr. Tufte's main theses is a good figure has high information density, yet his text descriptions do not measure up to this standard. They are regularly repetitive or shallow. He even misses an opportunity to take his own advice when he presents the cancer rate data on p. 174 and then re-presents it as a new table on p. 176 in a better format. If he had used the concept he presented through the Bumps chart on p. 56, allowing lines for the cancer types to cross according to the values of the rates so each column is correctly ordered, relationships would have been even clearer.

Although tables can be dense with information, it is the very density that makes them difficult to interpret and understand. A beautiful, but very complex, figure created from all of complex table is not necessarily better at communication even if it is interesting or pleasing to look at. This is why so often figures are made from subsets of tables. The challenge to the presenter is to find what is important in the data and clearly present it.

I often felt attempts were made to find something auspicious to say about a well executed figure when nothing more than the "beauty is apparent" is needed.

Although I don't malign PowerPoint as Dr. Tufte does, I am not enamored of it either. However, faulting the program as he does seems to me akin to faulting a hammer for the bent over nails driven into wood. A better hammer might drive nails more easily, but it is the person wielding the hammer who has the primary controlling effect. Handing out a copy of "The Table of Casualties" to an audience would certainly put more information into their hands, but it will get little into their minds. It is up to the presenter to find a means of communicating the meaningful information to those who couldn't be bothered to study such data. Whether PowerPoint slides or Word reports are used, the presenter must consider the audience and how to get important details into their heads.

Spend time enjoying the figures and know good data presentation is hard.

There are some really excellent and detailed reviews already posted here, and I will try not to duplicate their efforts. However for the benefit of those considering whether to purchase this book I will make some brief observations.

First, this book demonstrates why Tufte continues to be more or less unique in the field of technical graphical communications. His broad sweep and his high equal concern with aesthetics, cognitive decision science, principles of handling evidence, and intellectual integrity all combine to produce uniquely valuable examples for how to help facts tell their otherwise often hidden story.

Each of Tufte's books, including this one, clearly is a labor of love on his part, even to the point of sometimes being annoyingly painstaking. I almost don't want to sully his books with my scrawled margin notes and diagrams (but I do anyway, there's just too much there to think about to resist it!).

Second, I think Tufte can be rightly accused of keeping the same basic presentation with relatively minor variation ever since his first remarkable and brilliant book in the series. If you just want to know the principles he espouses, you could probably just buy the first book and not bother with the rest. It is in leading by example and illustrating the core principles by example after detailed example of exceptional visual displays of information that the subsequent books, including Beautiful Evidence, add value to the corpus.

There are some idiosyncrasies here that don't really pertain to evidence, such as photos of Tufte's own sculptures, but these arguably add a certain charm to the presentation and sometimes help to illustrate the unusual breadth of the author's application of principles. I don't find them particularly useful, but I've spoken with others with different interests who found them a fascinating addition.

Third, Tufte's work, for all of its inspiration and care, is not detailed enough to stand on its own as a course in technical graphical communication. You need to supplement it with an education in graphing techniques, statistics, decision making, evidence handling, and so on, in order to apply the principles to real and novel cases. His main value is in culling the universal principles from all of these fields to help guide their application to real world unique circumstances. Beautiful Evidence, like Tufte's previous books in the series, illustrates masterpieces of technical communications and why they are masterpieces, it doesn't offer step by step instructions for recreating them.

At his best, Tufte inspires your own genius, bridging art and science, he doesn't offer an algorithm for creating graphs. I think the worst you could say about Beautiful Evidence is the same as about Tufte's work in general, that he can become rather repetitive in his explanations, and may often tantalize you with brilliances that you may never be able to learn from or apply. The best I can often do is try to remember from the examples in Tufte's books that there may be a better way to communicate information, and that there may often be value or at least inspiration in perusing what really clever people have done with similar information in the past, rather than just applying a boilerplate graph to the problem.

The most useful specific things I have gotten from Beautiful Evidence so far have been the concept of sparklines to embed quantitatve context elegantly into text, the particularly cogent description of Tufte's general principles, and his detailed analysis of the "cognitive style" of bullet list presentations found so widely in presentations.

For those who, like me, never tire of seeing masterful examples of communicating technical information, are inspired by them to improve their own communications, and even find these examples beautiful as well as elegant, this book will be another very welcome and rewarding addition.

Disclosure: I am huge fan of Edward R. Tufte.

As a professional designer and part-time educator, I create presentations and reports every week to review with customers and students. Over the years I have developed a style that I like to use, which can be called "minimal". Tufte's work over the years has given helped me refine ideas and given me justifiable reasons to promote stylistic elements in my own, and other's presentations.

The book is truly a culmination of Tufte's ideas to date. Many of the concepts and techniques from his previous works are further defined and tailored to new examples. This tome considers a greater variety of communication and information. Many of his concepts continue to be refined, new ideas (new to me anyway), such as 'sparklines' are introduced and explored. I am amazed that every time I re-read a Tufte volume, I take away something new, usually because I am working on a different project with its own special information requirements, and I am able to see new opportunities for clarity.

What this book, and Tufte's others lack, is description of how to implement what you may learn here. Realize that this is not a step-by-step guide to presentations. The theories here, such as the inclusion of graphics in-line with text to further enhance comprehension of the stated ideas, can be easily implemented if you know your computer tools and have a desire to make better communications. There is little description of how to achieve what these ideals propose.

The book itself is also physically beautiful with heavy stock and perfect printing and graphics. It is part textbook, part heirloom. This is a comprehensive text covering many forms of visual communication. If you want to explore Tufte, but don't want to invest in all of his works, I recommend starting with this book.

I finished tufte last night... what a disaster, or perhaps sunk with high expectations.

I'm a huge fan of dr. tufte's very influential writing on information visualization - as far as I know he's done the best work in the field. But this book - while simply physically and visually stunning - is a real disappointment.

In this work I read about 20% insight, 40% recycled material and preaching to what is probably the choir (this includes an overly repetitious chapter-long discussion of minard's lovely march to moscow graphic & his previously available power point piece), and 40% filler & drek. I don't find his comments on art, writing styles, baseball, and the like to be terribly compelling, and are certainly done better in many other works - and indeed, his thoughts on these ended up as being pretty grating and condescending, if not just wrong.

And that the book ends with several pages of photos (a few of really poor quality, I might add) his own outdoor artwork (which are of passable quality, but what the *bleep* does this have to do with evidence as defined at the front of the book?) only throws salt on the wounds.

This thing is maddeningly inconsistent. I wish I could simply dismiss the work, but it's full of beauty and joy as well as the bad. Sparklines are fun, but could be improved on. Words + images combined inline, some great stuff there. But while some of the really lovely things, like the translations of galileo, are wonderful and exciting to any science-loving person, they really are pretty pointless to the conversation at hand. He has gone straight down since his first major book - a 5+ star effort, the 2nd, 4.5-5 stars, 3rd, 3 stars, and this is about a 2 star one (2.5+ if you haven't read the others.)

If he'd stop believing his sycophants and stop taking himself so seriously in his quest to convince the reader that he's a high priest on a moral crusade it'd be wonderful. He really does try to convince the reader that this topic is of high moral concern - not just sometimes, but in general. I don't buy it.

And you shouldn't buy this if you haven't read his other works (although if you haven't I'll admit you'll probably like this, you just don't know any better ;-)). Read the staggeringly good "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" or the wonderful "Envisioning Information". And if you must read this, soak up the good points, and try not to grind your teeth with the rest.

Edward Tufte's three previous books -- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explantions -- were good purchases. They're the sort of book that I go back to again and again, sometimes just browsing through just to get a little inspiration.

Consequently, I looked forward to receiving Tufte's fourth major book on information design, Beautiful Evidence. There was something different about reading this book compared to the others, though. Tufte has posted several sections on his discussion board well in advance to get feedback on the ideas. I was one of the many "Kindly Contributors," as Tufte calls them, on those chapters, particularly one on phylogenetic trees. Further, one chapter had already been printed as a little booklet on PowerPoint. It so successful that it went to two editions.

Furthermore, a cursory glance reveals many examples that Tufte has already talked about at some length in his earlier three books. There's the works of Galileo. There is a whole chapter about Minard's chart of Napolean's march towards Moscow, which Tufte pretty much single-handedly made famous in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, in which he said it might be the best statistical graph ever. High praise from a demanding taskmaster!

Given that a good chunk of the book was already familiar to me, was there anything new to be learned? Absolutely.

The first chapter concerns annotating pictures, which Tufte calls "mapped images." Right away, two of the books themes emerge. First, the importance of integration of different types of data. Here, pictures are the focus with the words providing supplemental information. Second, a concern is raised about dubious evidence, with the work of Ernst Mössel. Mössel tried to create a universal description of art, but ended up with a system that was so all encompassing that it could not be shown to be wrong.

The second chapter continues on the theme of integrating information in Tufte's concept of sparklines. Sparklines are little mini graphs that are meant to be fully incorporated into text. A few people are experimenting with these, and there are a few sparkline plug-ins for word processors that can be found on the web. It will be interesting to see if any high end technical journal will consider using these routinely.

The next chapter concerns using lines to link together. Tufte argues that most lines are underutilized, and could contain much more information and be much more useful than they usually are.

The fourth chapter is, to my mind, the heart of the book: "Words, numbers, images -- together." That statement is simple, but the many excellent examples make this a deep exploration of the idea. A chapter section on Galileo's work is wonderful. Every scientist knows Galileo's contributions, but seeing them through Tufte's words and pictures gave me a much deeper appreciation of the impact Galileo had. Tufte credits Galileo with a "forever idea," which, in a word, might be "empiricism." More to the theme of the book, however, Tufte uses Galileo's work to show how his arguments were enhanced by an integration of word and image. Again, this is an idea that Tufte has talked about before, that good displays put many comparisons in "eyespan," but the point is pushed farther in this book than before.

Similarly, the fifth chapter on Minard's chart is worth Tufte's revisit, as he uses it to exemplify powerful general principles we can learn about how to make "intense" displays that generate credible, powerful evidence. One simple example lesson from this chapter: sign your work. Credibility is enhanced by accountability.

Bad evidence, which had been introduced in the beginning, returns in force in the next two chapters, the second of which contains Tufte's already famous indictment of PowerPoint. Making a graph, Tufte argues, is an ethical act. Again, this is not a new idea for Tufte, since he introduced the "lie factor" in his first book. What is new is his argument that consuming such information is also an ethical act. Too often, we are lazy and don't hold liars accountable. These are powerful and important messages in an age of spin and truthiness. As I've said before, a lie left unchallenged gains the perception of truth.

The book's last chapter, on pedastals for sculptures, is the weakest and could have been omitted. It is disconnected from the rest of the book. The book, after all, is supposed to be about evidence. Nobody that I know of has ever claimed that scultural pedastals were ever intended or perceived to be evidence. Instead, the chapter showcases one of Tufte's other interests, outdoor abstract scultures. Still, Tufte's passion and thoughtfulness still shines, so much so that this deviant chapter is almost forgivable. Almost.

Similarly, I am puzzled by the choice of dust cover, which shows a series of pictures of one of Tufte's dogs leaping into a lake. Beautiful they may be, but are they evidence? If so, of what?

And I'll put out just one more thing that annoyed me in the text. In a few points, Tufte suggests that we ask ourselves, "What would Richard Feynman think?" I find this just as annoying as, "What would Jesus do?" I have no way of knowing how bright (Feynman) and profound (Jesus) people will respond to new and novel situations. Isn't this one of the reasons we find these people to be bright or profound? It's more useful to invoke their principles than trying to use imprecise empathy to figure out what to do. Particularly when I ask, "What have I done?" and see that I've approached the same problems in several different ways, often with equal success. In other words, when I see a bad graph, I think it's more useful to think of one of the many simple but deep ideas presented in Beautiful Evidence ("Show comparisons, contrasts, differences") instead of asking, "How would Tufte redesign this graph?" I could only really answer the latter question if I have buckets of money to try to hire Tufte as a consultant.

Finally, I am left wondering about cases where the evidence may be highly credible -- but is not beautiful. While working on this review, I was reading a scientific paper (Pellmyr, Olle & Leebens-Mack, James. 1999. Forty million years of mutualism: Evidence for Eocene origin of the yucca-yucca moth association. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96: 9178-9183). The evidence is highly credible and believable, but I daresay that it is not beautiful. The argumentation is precise, but deadening. Tufte talks about ways that flawed evidence may be concealed (second hand repackaging: e.g., textbooks presenting summaries of technical papers that very few have read). But papers like this raise another way that flawed evidence might hide that Tufte does not discuss: "If it's incomprehensible, it must be brilliant." People have become accustomed to research using techniques that are so new, few people understand them. Unintelligibility itself becomes an indication of credibility. That's bad. I think there's more to be said here, but perhaps that will be Tufte's book five, since the introduction promises he has more to say on the subject.

This book is, of course, going to be widely read and highly praised. But I don't think it will it be read enough. It is frustrating to read something like this advocating ethical scholarship and standards for evidence when there are new books that flat out lie about science. And when you can lie about science -- that part of human endeavor that Galileo transformed with his forever idea that it was all about evidence -- you can lie about anything.

To do your bit to kill truthiness, you could do much worse than following the principles in Beautiful Evidence.

This is the fourth of Edward Tufte's books on the graphical display of information, and one might fear that he might be stretching the point too far and running out of ideas. One would be wrong, however, because this is a wonderful book, and is possibly the best of the four. It is a must-have, must-read, must-understand, must-apply sort of book. No one who is seriously interested in preparing illustrations for conveying information can afford to be unfamiliar with Tufte's ideas.

Inevitably there is some overlap with the earlier books, but this is deliberate policy, not carelessness. As Tufte makes clear, it is better to repeat information than to expect readers to hunt for it somewhere else. Many potentially useful books have been rendered much more difficult to use than they ought to be, at worst by gathering together the artwork in one place, far away from the text that it relates to, or, slightly less bad, by failing to ensure that it appears on the same double-page spread as its accompanying text. Tufte doesn't even believe in referring to tables and figures by numbers, because he considers that any illustration can just be introduced with "here" or "in this example", etc., if it is properly placed. This is what he practises himself, but the technical demands of commercial publishers will make it difficult advice to follow, unfortunately. However, with modern computer-based publishing it ought to become easy in the future if enough pressure is put on publishers. If Galileo could integrate all of his diagrams into his text, why can we not do that now, with far more technical aids at our disposal than were available to him?

The main new idea that appears in Beautiful Evidence is the description of sparklines: small, data-intense, word-like graphics -- word-like in the sense that a sparkline can appear right in the middle of a sentence, but can contain the equivalent of hundreds of numbers. Sparklines are ideal for conveying time series, such as a series of blood-glucose measurements for a diabetes patient. With suitable shading they can indicately instantly whether the measurements fall within the normal ranges.

Tufte's short pamphlet about the presentation software PowerPoint, previously available as a separate publication, now appears as a chapter in Beautiful Evidence. His main points are that PowerPoint slides are typically so low in information-content that they insult the audiences they are directed towards, and that bulleted lists of slogans are just a pretence at supplying real arguments.

Charles Joseph Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia already played a prominent role in the first book in the series, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and it reappears here, with a whole chapter devoted to analysing it. This is space well used, because to emulate Minard it is essential to go beyond a casual appreciation of his work as excellent; it demands a careful analysis of what it is that makes it excellent.