{"id":503,"date":"2009-01-16T00:13:03","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T05:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=503"},"modified":"2009-01-16T00:13:03","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T05:13:03","slug":"edward-tufte-and-data-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/01\/16\/edward-tufte-and-data-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Tufte and Data Presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m putting together a public policy course for the first time since graduate school.\u00a0 It reminds me what I love about what I do.\u00a0 Public policy is about how we solve common problems.\u00a0 The palete from which to choose readings is unlimited.\u00a0 That’s been part of my problem…there’s so much interesting material to talk about out there it’s impposible to narrow it down.<\/p>\n

One area that sorely lacking in public policy scholarship is the effect of the presentation of information on decision-makers.\u00a0 Im having my students read a few articles about Edward Tufte<\/a>.\u00a0 Bonanos, C. (2007) The Minister of Information. New York Magazine.<\/a> and\u00a0 Smith, F. (2007) Intelligent Designs. STANFORD Magazine.<\/a> Tufte is a self declared arch-enemy of power point and is famous for pointing out<\/a> NASA’s scientists’ inability to convey important information to higher-ups before the Challenger disaster.<\/p>\n

He’s also famous for popularizing this map by Charles Joseph Minard that shows the losses incurred by Napoleon’s army in the Russian campaign of 1812. The diagram show how Napoleon’s army thinned (beige band) as temperatures in Russia dropped (black band).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It makes me wonder how different our disciplines would be if most of us put thought into the form of our data presentations. We’re trained to focus solely on function but, mostly because of cost concerns, our conferences provide us little opportunity to use technologies that could bring our data to life. Would having LCD displays at academic conferences make them more policy relevant? Would they encourage more journalists to attend? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m putting together a public policy course for the first time since graduate school.\u00a0 It reminds me what I love about what I do.\u00a0 Public policy is about how we solve common problems.\u00a0 The palete from which to choose readings is unlimited.\u00a0 That’s been part of my problem…there’s so much interesting material to talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,513,971,371,970],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-data","tag-design","tag-policy","tag-tufte"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}