Statistics make my heart go pitter-pat. Specifically, well done, well displayed, meaningful statistics that provide insight into a complex phenomenon — mmmm, what could be better? (It can even be a matter of life and death.)
So it’s no wonder I fell deeply in love with Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information the day a review copy arrived at my cubicle in the Enrollment Analysis Division of the Indiana University Office of the Registrar back in the late 80′s. If there’s a better book out there on the visual display of quantitative information, I’d like to see it. Really.
Looks like plenty of others share the love:
Edward Tufte is most likely the world’s only graphic designer with roadies. “We own two of everything—amplifiers, digital projectors,” other A/V gear, he says. “One set moves up and down the West Coast, and one stays in the East, to keep the FedEx charges down.” He plays 35 or so dates a year, at $380 per ticket. Today’s is in a raddled old auditorium on 34th Street, over the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Like a musician’s tour to promote an album, this one—which will hit New York again in the fall—exists partly to sell Tufte’s four design books, the newest of which is titled Beautiful Evidence. But Tufte, through his own Graphics Press, is the book’s publisher, and he doesn’t do the usual quick month of hard promotion before heading back to his desk. He keeps going on the road, selling steadily, a few gigs a month, year after year. That may be why there are 1.4 million copies of his titles in print—a staggering figure for self-publishing. (The top seller, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, has been a reliable mover since 1983.) And at these six-and-a-half-hour presentations, the audience starts cheering when he hits the floor, clamors for their books to be signed, buys posters at the table out front. As soon as the applause stops, Tufte bolts backstage, enthusiastically draining a Corona. “There are usually about 500 people who want to talk afterwards, and I’ve exhausted myself,” he says sheepishly. “I have to go hide out. Otherwise it takes hours.” This is all a good deal more lucrative than many author tours. “Thirty-five, forty dollars a book, 1.4 million copies?” he says, with a quizzical smile, when I ask about money. “You can multiply.”
A couple times a year I get a flyer for one of these presentations. I’m always tempted to go, and if I had an employer who would pick up the tab, I’d go like a shot.
(HT: edrants)
I loved The Ghost Map. I’d really enjoy one of these presentations, too.
Oh, man, I love that stuff.
Think I could write off the cost of a ticket as a freelance indexing business expense?
Absolutely you could write it off. And you could write off the attendance costs of your assistants as well! Obviously it’s too much information for one person to absorb in a single sitting.
Kaethe — if you get a chance, take a look at that NYRB article. After the Ghost Map review it goes on to tell about programs in Africa that have slashed mortality rates simply by keeping thorough records and statistics. Keeping the stats leads to better information, which allows better decision-making, and in addition there is more accountability and a greater feeling of efficacy. Stats are beautiful.
You might want to check out this interview done by Dan Doernberg some years ago.
Oops. Here’s the URL. Trouble with the hyperlink.
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0008.2.html
What an astute interviewer
I thought it was a good interview. Actually, Ed Tufte used to have it on his site, but I just noticed that he posted a more recent one in place of it
Great interview! Thanks for pointing us to it.