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Edward Rolf Tufte (; born March 14, 1942), sometimes known as "ET",. is an American statistician and
professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of
political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
, statistics, and
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization.


Biography

Edward Rolf Tufte was born in 1942 in Kansas City, Missouri, to Virginia Tufte (1918–2020) and Edward E. Tufte (1912–1999). He grew up in Beverly Hills, California, where his father was a longtime city official, and he graduated from
Beverly Hills High School Beverly Hills High School (usually abbreviated as Beverly or as BHHS) is the only major public high school in Beverly Hills, California. The other public high school in Beverly Hills, Moreno High School, is a small alternative school located on B ...
.Reynolds, Christopher.
"ART; Onward means going upward; Edward Tufte has spent his career fighting the visually dull and flat. Even his sculpture is a leap."
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'', November 14, 2002. Accessed April 23, 2008. " dward Tufte who shares in Cheshire, Conn., with his wife, graphic design professor Inge Druckrey, and three golden retrievers, is a 1960 graduate of Beverly Hills High School."
He received a BS and MS in statistics from Stanford University and a PhD in political science from
Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
. His dissertation, completed in 1968, was entitled ''The Civil Rights Movement and Its Opposition''. He was then hired by
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
's
Woodrow Wilson School The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...
, where he taught courses in
political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
and data analysis while publishing three quantitatively inclined political science books. In 1975, while at Princeton, Tufte was asked to teach a statistics course to a group of journalists who were visiting the school to study economics. He developed a set of readings and lectures on statistical graphics, which he further developed in joint seminars he taught with renowned statistician John Tukey, a pioneer in the field of information design. These course materials became the foundation for his first book on information design, ''The Visual Display of Quantitative Information''.. After negotiations with major publishers failed, Tufte decided to self-publish ''Visual Display'' in 1982, working closely with graphic designer
Howard Gralla Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...
. He financed the work by taking out a
second mortgage Second mortgages, commonly referred to as junior liens, are loans secured by a property in addition to the primary mortgage. Depending on the time at which the second mortgage is originated, the loan can be structured as either a standalone secon ...
on his home. The book quickly became a commercial success and secured his transition from political scientist to information expert. On March 5, 2010, President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
appointed Tufte to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Recovery Independent Advisory Panel "to provide transparency in the use of Recovery-related funds"..


Work

Tufte is an expert in the presentation of
informational graphics Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes (2004). ''Public Relations Wr ...
such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the
American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...
. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social and ...
.


Information design

Tufte's writing is important in such fields as information design and
visual literacy Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text. Visual literacy ...
, which deal with the visual communication of information. He coined the word '' chartjunk'' to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays. Tufte's other key concepts include what he calls the ''lie factor'', the ''data-ink ratio'', and the ''data density'' of a graphic. He uses the term "data-ink ratio" to argue against using excessive decoration in visual displays of quantitative information. In ''Visual Display'', Tufte explains, "Sometimes decoration can help editorialize about the substance of the graphic. But it is wrong to distort the data measures—the ink locating values of numbers—in order to make an editorial comment or fit a decorative scheme." Tufte encourages the use of data-rich illustrations that present all available data. When such illustrations are examined closely, every
data point In statistics, a unit of observation is the unit described by the data that one analyzes. A study may treat groups as a unit of observation with a country as the unit of analysis, drawing conclusions on group characteristics from data collected at ...
has a value, but when they are looked at more generally, only trends and patterns can be observed. Tufte suggests these macro/micro readings be presented in the space of an eye-span, in the high resolution format of the printed page, and at the unhurried pace of the viewer's leisure. He uses several historical examples to make his case. These include John Snow's cholera outbreak map, Charles Joseph Minard's ''Carte Figurative'', early space debris plots,
Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He wa ...
's ''
Sidereus Nuncius ''Sidereus Nuncius'' (usually ''Sidereal Messenger'', also ''Starry Messenger'' or ''Sidereal Message'') is a short Astronomy, astronomical treatise (or ''pamphlet'') published in New Latin by Galileo Galilei on March 13, 1610. It was the first ...
'', and
Maya Lin Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memoria ...
's
Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those ...
. For instance, the listing of the names of deceased soldiers on the black granite of Lin's sculptural memorial is shown to be more powerful as a chronological list rather than as an alphabetical one. The sacrifice each fallen individual has made is thus highlighted within the overall time scope of the war. In ''Sidereus Nuncius'' Galilei presents the nightly observations of the moons of Jupiter in relation to the body itself, interwoven with the two-month narrative record.


Criticism of PowerPoint

Tufte has criticized the way Microsoft PowerPoint is typically used. In his essay "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint", Tufte criticizes many aspects of the software: * Its use as a way to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience; * Its unhelpfully simplistic tables and charts, a design decision holdover from the low resolution of early computer displays; * The
outliner An outliner (or outline processor) is a specialized type of text editor (word processor) used to create and edit outlines, which are text files which have a tree structure, for organization. Textual information is contained in discrete sections c ...
's causing ideas to be arranged in an artificially deep hierarchy, itself subverted by the need to restate the hierarchy on each slide; * Enforcement of the audience's lockstep linear progression through that hierarchy (whereas with handouts, readers could browse and relate items at their leisure); * Poor
typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...
and chart layout, from presenters who are poor designers or who use poorly designed templates and default settings (in particular, difficulty in using
scientific notation Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small (usually would result in a long string of digits) to be conveniently written in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form, o ...
); * Simplistic thinking—from ideas being squashed into bulleted lists; and stories with a beginning, middle, and end being turned into a collection of disparate, loosely disguised points—presenting a misleading façade of objectivity and neutrality that people associate with science, technology, and "bullet points". Tufte cites the way PowerPoint was used by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
engineers in the events leading to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster as an example of PowerPoint's many problems. The software style is designed to persuade rather than to inform people of technical details. Tufte's analysis of a NASA PowerPoint slide is included in the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board The ''Columbia'' Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was an internal commission convened by NASA to investigate the destruction of the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' during STS-107 upon atmospheric re-entry on February 1, 2003. The panel determin ...
’s report -- including an engineering detail buried in small type on a crowded slide with six bullet points, that if presented in a regular engineering
white paper A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white pape ...
, might have been noticed and the disaster prevented.. Instead, Tufte argues that the most effective way of presenting information in a technical setting, such as an academic seminar or a meeting of industry experts, is by distributing a brief written report that can be read by all participants in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the meeting. Tufte believes that this is the most efficient method of transferring knowledge from the presenter to the audience and then the rest of the meeting is devoted to discussion and debate.


Small multiple

One method Tufte encourages to allow quick visual comparison of multiple series is the
small multiple A small multiple (sometimes called trellis chart, lattice chart, grid chart, or panel chart) is a series of similar graphs or charts using the same scale and axes, allowing them to be easily compared. It uses multiple views to show different parti ...
, a chart with many series shown on a single pair of axes that can often be easier to read when displayed as several separate pairs of axes placed next to each other. He suggests this is particularly helpful when the series are measured on quite different vertical (''y''-axis) scales, but over the same range on the horizontal ''x''-axis (usually time).


Sparkline

Sparkline A sparkline is a very small line chart, typically drawn without axes or coordinates. It presents the general shape of the variation (typically over time) in some measurement, such as temperature or stock market price, in a simple and highly con ...
s are a condensed way to present trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average
temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...
or stock market activity, often embedded directly in the text; for example: The Dow Jones index for February 7, 2006 . These are often used as elements of a
small multiple A small multiple (sometimes called trellis chart, lattice chart, grid chart, or panel chart) is a series of similar graphs or charts using the same scale and axes, allowing them to be easily compared. It uses multiple views to show different parti ...
with several lines used together. Tufte explains the sparkline as a kind of "word" that conveys rich information without breaking the flow of a sentence or paragraph made of other "words" both visual and conventional. To date, the earliest known implementation of sparklines was conceived by interaction designer Peter Zelchenko and implemented by programmer Mike Medved in early 1998.


Sculpture

Beyond his academic endeavors over the years, Tufte has created sculptures, often large outdoor ones made of metal or stone, which were first primarily exhibited on his own rural
Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...
property. In 2009–10, some of these artworks were exhibited at the
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is located in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The Aldrich has no permanent collection and is the only museum in Connecticut that is dedicated solely to the exhibition of contemporary art. The museum presents the first ...
in
Ridgefield, Connecticut Ridgefield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the 300-year-old community had a population of 25,033 at the 2020 census. The town center, which was formerly a borough ...
, in the one-man show ''Edward Tufte: Seeing Around''. The Tufte sculpture garden in Woodbury, Connecticut is open to the public one day per year. In 2010, Edward Tufte opened a gallery, ET Modern, in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
's Chelsea Art District" at 11th Avenue and 20th Street. The gallery closed in 2013.


Bibliography


Works on political economy

* * * . * * * *Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: * . * * . * . * * * * * * * . * *Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: *Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: * *Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: *. * *


Works of analytic design

* . * * . * * * * * . * . * . * . * .


Exhibitions

* . * . * . Unavailable 19 Feb. 2020.


References


External links

* . * . * . * , 47 min. * sharply criticizes Tufte's analysis of pre-disaster non-employment of graphics in ''Visual Explanations''. Robison was a
Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private research university in the town of Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional ...
professor; Boisjoly a directly involved Thiokol engineer; Hoeker and Young freshman RIT students
Alternative link.
* . * . * . * . * . {{DEFAULTSORT:Tufte, Edward Rolf 1942 births Living people People from Kansas City, Missouri American statisticians Design writers Information graphic designers Information visualization experts Beverly Hills High School alumni Stanford University alumni Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Yale University faculty AIGA medalists Fellows of the American Statistical Association Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows 21st-century American sculptors