Tufte received a BS and a MS in statistics from Stanford University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from Yale University.[7] His dissertation was completed in 1968 and titled The Civil Rights Movement and Its Opposition.[8]
Tufte was hired in 1967 by the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University as a lecturer in politics and public affairs, where he steadily moved up to the rank of full Professor.[when?] He taught courses there in political economy 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 Tufte's first book on information design, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.[9][10]
After negotiations with major publishers failed, Tufte decided to self-publish the book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in 1982, working closely with graphic designer Howard Gralla. Tufte financed the work by taking out a second mortgage on his home. The book quickly became a commercial success and secured Tufte's transition from political scientist to information expert.[9]
In 1999, after 22 years of service at Yale University, his professorship at Yale was made Emeritus.[11]
Tufte's writing is important in such fields as information design and 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.[13]
Tufte uses the term "data-ink ratio" to argue against using excessive decoration in visual displays of quantitative information.[14] 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."[15]
Tufte encourages the use of data-rich illustrations that present all available data. When such illustrations are examined closely, every data point 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.[citation needed]
Tufte uses several historical examples to make his case. These include John Snow'scholera outbreak map, Charles Joseph Minard's Carte Figurative, early space debris plots, Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuncius, and Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 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.[16] In Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo presents the nightly observations of the moons of Jupiter in relation to the body itself, interwoven with the two-month narrative record.[17]
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:[citation needed]
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'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 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);
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 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’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, might have been noticed and the disaster prevented.[18][19]
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.[18]
Small multiple
One method Tufte encourages to allow quick visual comparison of multiple series is the small multiple, 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).[citation needed]
Sparkline
Earliest known implementation of sparklines, around January 1998 by interaction designer Peter Zelchenko for programmer Michael Medved and the QuoteTracker application (sold to TD Ameritrade).
Sparklines are a condensed way to present trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average temperature or stock market activity, often embedded directly in the text; for example: The Dow Jones index for February 7, 2006 .[20][21] These are often used as elements of a small multiple 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.[citation needed][22]
Sculpture
Beyond his academic endeavors over the years, Tufte has created sculptures, often large outdoor ones made of metal or stone,[6] that were first primarily exhibited on his own rural Connecticut property. In 2009–10, some of these artworks were exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in the one-man show Edward Tufte: Seeing Around.[23]
Hogpen Hill Farms
Hogpen Hill Farms, the 234-acre (95-hectare) Tufte sculpture garden in Woodbury, Connecticut, is open to the public on summer weekends.[24]
Brody, Richard A.; Tufte, Edward R. (March 1964). "Constituent-Congressional Communication on Fallout Shelters: The Congressional Polls". Journal of Communication. 14 (1): 34–39. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1964.tb02345.x.
Ekman, Paul; Tufte, Edward R.; Archibald, Kathleen; Brody, Richard A (June 1966). "Coping with Cuba: Divergent Policy Preferences of State Political Leaders". The Journal of Conflict Resolution. 10 (2): 180–97. doi:10.1177/002200276601000203. S2CID154210702.
Tufte, Edward R. (1968), The Civil Rights Movement and Its Opposition (PhD thesis).
———; Reed, John Shelton (Winter 1969–1970). "A Note of Caution in Using Variables That Have Common Elements". The Public Opinion Quarterly. 33 (4): 622–6. doi:10.1086/267756.
———; Kish, Ed L. (1970). Some statistical problems in research design. The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems. Reading, MA: Addison–Wesley.
Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: Palumbo, Dennis J. (September 1970). "Statistics in Political and Behavioral Science". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 65 (331): 1414–5. doi:10.2307/2284317. JSTOR2284317.
——— (June 1973). "The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems". The American Political Science Review. 67 (2): 540–54. doi:10.2307/1958782. JSTOR1958782. S2CID33920492.
——— (1974), The Political Manipulation of the Economy: Influence of the Electoral Cycle on Macroeconomic Performance and Policy (unpublished manuscript), Department of Politics, Princeton University.
Lemieux, Peter H.; Kort, Fred; Pfotenhauer, David; Stewart, Philip R; Burnham, Walter Dean; Tufte, Edward R. (March 1974). "Communications". The American Political Science Review. 68 (1): 202–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055400235478. S2CID251095897.
———; Sun, Richard A (1974). "Are there Bellwether Electoral Districts?". Public Opin Q. 39 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1086/268196.
——— (November 1975). "Electronic Calculators and Data Analysis: A Consumer's Report on the SR-51, HP-21, HP-55, and HP-65". American Journal of Political Science. 19 (4): 783–94. doi:10.2307/2110727. JSTOR2110727.
——— (1977). "Improving Data Display". Dept. Of Statistics. University of Chicago.
——— (March 1977). "Political Statistics for the United States: Observations on Some Major Data Sources". The American Political Science Review. 71 (1): 305–14. doi:10.2307/1956972. JSTOR1956972. S2CID144587924.
Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: Cohen, Jacob; Cohen, Patricia (December 1979). "Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 74 (368): 935. doi:10.2307/2286442. JSTOR2286442.
Hoffman, David; Matisse, Henri; Tufte, Edward R (1987). "The computer-aided discovery of new embedded minimal surfaces". The Mathematical Intelligencer. 9 (3): 8–21. doi:10.1007/BF03023947. S2CID121320768.
Edward R. Tufte reviewed work: Rose, Richard; Peters, Guy (June 1980). "Can Government Go Bankrupt?". The American Political Science Review. 74 (2): 567–8. doi:10.2307/1960736. JSTOR1960736. S2CID144477006.
——— (1985). Evidence Selection in Statistical Studies of Political Economy: The Distribution of Published Statistics (unpublished manuscript)..
Report(PDF), vol.1, Columbia Accident Investigation Board, August 2003, p.15, archived from the original(PDF) on July 24, 2011, retrieved August 11, 2008.
Tufte, Edward Rolf (2007), "Intelligent Designs", Magazine (article), Stanford University's Alumni, archived from the original on June 11, 2011, retrieved March 27, 2007.
.[20][21] These are often used as elements of a small multiple 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.[citation needed][22]
