001.422 Tuf

It is beautiful outside today, so I went for a walk around the neighborhood and ended up at the Duncan Branch Library. Alexandria has a pretty good city library system, and the Duncan is a very nice local branch. It was renovated and expanded just recently, and has a decent collection on site.

Finding myself there without a particular plan, I decided to look for a book I just heard about recently, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. They had a copy checked in, and interestingly enough it was the first book in the non-fiction stacks, on the very end of the top row of the first shelf.

I skimmed through the book, but did not check it out. I think I might prefer to have my own copy. It has been described as a "Strunk & White for graphics." Tufte lays out how graphics can be best used to convey complex information, while avoiding numerous common errors. He shows how graphs and charts are used to lie or made confusing with "chartjunk." And the text gives simple rules for conveying the most information with the least ink, eliminating confusion and errors. I would recommend anyone who regularly creates or reads graphs and charts, professionally or otherwise, to see if your library has a copy.