Yesterday I posted an excerpt from Matthias Shapiro’s critique of the winning design for visualizing the federal budget. While I was reading his blog, I also happened across this free download of a chapter he wrote for a new book about information graphics. The chapter is worthwhile and covers many basic principles with illustrated examples. I haven’t seen the whole book yet. Still waiting for that day when someone decides I’m an influential blogger and sends me all the relevant new books for free. Until then, I’m happy to find free downloads like this one.

The full citation for the chapter is like this:

• Shapiro, Matthias. (24 June 2010) “Once upon a stacked time series” chapter in Steele, J. and Iliinsky, N., eds. Beautiful Visualization, O’Reilly Media.
• Click here to download