The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R Tufte #
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R Tufte. Finally pulled the trigger on this “classic” after knowing about some of his views and having used the tufte LaTeX style several times. Very good food for thought, especially on making complex things simple and not wasting ink (e.g. box plot being heavily redundant). Also really enjoyed learning more about the history of charts. Some designs have clearly not caught on, but it seems like he basically invented or popularized the facet wrap. One thing I really did not like: he does not believe in cross-referencing figures at all, but only references them with demonstratives like “this plot” and whatnot. It’s not always obvious!! HE doesn’t even use “on the following page” or “in the column on the right”. Hard disagree with him on no explicit references to figures. Grade: B+