If Obsession (with a new idea, book, author...) is a crime, let me be guilty

It seems to me that finding a new favorite author, artist, musical group or even idea follows the same stages as falling in and out of love. (not the stages of grief, but similar).

The example I would use is my recent dalliance with the information presentation and design ideas of Edward Tufte.

Stage one: Falling in Love.

I never knew that anyone thought this way about data presentation. Tufte's ideas are terrific and visionary. Every pearl of presentation wisdom that comes from his mouth is exactly the right answer and perfectly fixes everything.


Stage two: I Am Not Worthy of This Love.

I'll never do anything even a tenth as well as Tufte. His figures produce epiphanies of insight and mine cause the viewer to suffer headaches and nausea and some to go irrevocably insane. I should just stop presenting any data to anyone in any form ever.


Stage Three: The Blinders Come Off.

I can't stop doing any presenting. Tufte seems a little rigid in his outlook on things. I may not be Mozart but Salieri had some good tunes also. My figures are good enough to get the point across. These other presentation design guys over here don't think Tufte is the final answer on data presentation.


Stage Four: The Breakup

Yeah I used to think Tufte had some good presentation idea, but he was too rigid in his standards. My friends say they never really liked him in the first place. I am so glad I am over that and can get back to work. Stephen Few has some good ideas on data presentation, I just might check that out.


And so the cycle continues.

I think you could apply the same formula to a favorite author that you just discovered, a new political philosophy, management fad, computer program, TV show, new girlfriend, or any other subject of fascination. My goal in life is to get through the cycles as fast as possible to preserve a healthy skepticism and keep a measured perspective. Skepticism is the best philosophy, I love it the most. (... here we go again.)

Read More

That old tuba argument again

This comic is very similar to discussions I have had, though without the unicycles. Really I do play the tuba, though I haven't in a long while. I need a tuba nook.

(via the excellent Wondermark, which you should read every day.)

Read More

Aspiring to Tuftian perfection - presenting data

Often financial, scientific or engineering analysis takes large amounts of data and numbers and crunches them down to a single number or decision. I know it felt that way when I was researching and writing my thesis. Much like 42 being the answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything", it doesn't seem fair to take all of the data and turn it into one number or decision. Being intellectually honest and the presentation of the data have a lot of influence on the final outcome.

That intellectual honesty and the importance of good data representation and presentation are the lifework of Edward Tufte. I have just finished reading Beautiful Evidence and Visual Explanations which are his third and fourth books on the topic of data presentation. I am going backwards in the series because that's what's available to me and because I needed to answer a question about presenting some data of my own, while keeping my intellectual integrity at the same time.

Edward Tufte describes his books in the introduction to Visual Explanations. He says that The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is about pictures of numbers, Envisioning Information is about pictures of nouns, and Visual Explanations is about pictures of verbs. Beautiful Evidence seems to be about the best examples of these pictures, where well presented data helps in decision making. He also has counter examples where poorly presented data hinders decision making. In the two books I have just read he takes especial umbrage with the presentation of the data for the Columbia and Challenger shuttle disasters. His opinion is that the data presentations failed to stop and potentially caused the disasters. He also hates Powerpoint. He has been quoted as saying "Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely"

In Visual Explanations, in his review of the reason for the Challenger disaster he notes how the data about O-rings should have actually resulted in a recommendation not to fly but the presentations did not get the message across. The flight day had temperatures and conditions that were far outside of any of the past experience in flight or testing that the O-ring testing and usage had, yet the data presented didn't clearly indicate that. He proposes the unclear presentation as a reflection of unclear thinking and suggests this is the cause of the disaster. There is some disagreement with Tufte's analysis of the presentation flaws leading to the bad decision to launch in cold weather.

In this book, Tufte also uses the famous origins of epidemiology story of John Snow discovering that the Broad Street well was the source of an 1854 cholera outbreak in London. Tufte cites the discovery of the pump well that caused cholera epidemic as good presentation of data but he cautions that if the data were presented in a different form it might give different conclusions. Tufte lauds the fact that Dr. Snow checked his conclusions by looking at anomalous data and finding the reasons for them to see if his hypothesis was supported.

In Beautiful Evidence, Tufte reviews the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. When the Columbia Space Shuttle was in orbit after it appeared that the wing had been struck by debris during launch, the team on the ground had 12 days to determine if the debris that hit the wing was an issue. Once again the team could not present the information in a manner to convince people that the impact under discussion was probably far larger than any from data they had from previous testing. Tufte is extremely critical in these examples because he feels that the bad presentation was a sign of unclear thinking and was in the direct causal chain that led to the disaster.

Of course there are those who decry my "What would Tufte say?" enthusiasm as I critically analyze every chart in every presentation that I make. I wholehearted recommend reading all of his work, and I realize that Tufte's design of presentation criteria are excellent but perhaps a little perfectionist. Not every presentation I make is life or death, in fact none are. So perhaps I can get away with a "good enough" approach in which I try to keep some of his principles in mind when I must present data and still conform to a corporate fashion for PowerPoint or Excel charts of a certain type. The alternative is to despair of ever producing Tuftian presentations with a clarity of thought that only a few transcendent individuals possess. Like Salieri as portrayed in the fictional Amadeus, I can recognize his genius but can only produce mediocrity myself.

Read More

Cable Connector Quiz

Mental Floss has the Cable Connector Quiz, with cables both modern and ancient (in computer years). I scored an 80%, I am sure you can do much better.

The Cable Connector Quiz

(via Neatorama)

Read More

Water burbling under the ice on Shellpot Creek

Slowly but surely the waterfall on Shellpot Creek is accumulating more ice. This sound in this video doesn't capture the peaceful burbling of the water as much as I would like, but try to imagine it.

Read More

Shellpot Creek water fall not quite frozen yet

Even with tempertures in the 20's the past few nights the waterfall on Shellpot Creek behind my house hasn't quite frozen completely yet. This week will be cold during the day and frigid (teens) at night. I suspect we may see the water stop.

Read More

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Everyone says, "Welcome to the new decade", but I thought that since there was no year zero, that the decade would end with 2010, not begin. I suppose it's that change in the tens digit that has everyone excited.

There also seems to be controversy as to whether 2010 should be "two thousand ten" or "twenty ten". How are you pronouncing it?

Read More