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by zero_k 533 days ago
This is by Edward Tufte. If you haven't had the chance to check out Edward Tufte's other works, in particular, the Visual Display of Quantitative Information [1] then I highly suggest you do. Every time I see a horrible graphic in a research paper, I redirect authors to [1]. It ought to be a must-read for anyone wanting to create a graph. Seriously, if you intend to display information, read that book. It'll open your eyes to make you see the immense amount of waste of space and clutter that people introduce.

It's basically an ode to clear, cutter-less, data visualization. Check out this timetable [2] (horizontal lines: stations, vertical lines: hours, diagonal lines: trains), and your mind will be blown. It's compact, it gives you all the information you need, it can be navigated by your grandma (or your granddaughter) and it likely shows more information than most digital or paper-based system you have ever met, in a smaller format.

[1] https://www.edwardtufte.com/book/the-visual-display-of-quant... [2] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/0*8zW...

1 comments

I feel the same way, and a good follow up book about more general communication is Trees, maps and theorems by Doumont, https://andrewpwheeler.com/2016/12/05/review-of-trees-maps-a...

That said, I think it is possible my refusal to do cheeky ppt slides with smart art and fill them with graphs of real data instead has stunted my career growth into management.

One problem with both of these takes on powerpoint is they assume it will be presented in person. That's less often the case now. People present more often via teams or zoom and so a lot of the ideas (don't expect people to read and listen simultaneously) are not accurate anymore (half your viewers are audio only, more people get copies of the slides than make the original presentation). Remote vs in person are totally different beasts.