I'm Back

I was in the DC area for a few days. Thank you to the in-laws for their hospitality -- dinner was great. Sorry I didn't get to see more of you (that is, more actual in-laws and more of those that I did see).

I was in the area for a workshop on Presenting Data and Information, by a guy named Edward Tufte. Very interesting workshop. Tufte focuses on ways that information of all kinds gets presented in charts, maps, graphs, etc., and how poorly contructed visuals can cause problems for the people who are trying to get information from them. (Tufte got famous because of his critique of the ways the Boeing engineers presented problems with the Columbia space shuttle in a PowerPoint presentation to NASA that downplayed the problems that ultimately caused the shuttle to burn up as it re-entered the atmosphere.)

I took an Amtrak down to DC. I sat behind a "Life Coach" who was speaking on the phone -- loudly -- with clients for the first two hours of the trip. ("Brian? Hey, it's Brad. Who's a Big Dog, Brian?...Who's a Big Dog?...Who's a Big Dog?...There ya go, Brian. So what's been happening this week, buddy?") Fascinating process to listen in on. I now know that life is not a spectator sport. We do not watch the game, we play it, and we sweat and grunt as we do so. I love a good extended metaphor.

Anyway, Tufte is what we in the college teaching profession call a "Rock Star," someone who attracts a large following when he speaks publicly. Tufte is a retired Yale professor, and my guess is he retired early when he realized how much more money he could make by traveling the country and giving one-day workshops like these. He had the whole Rock Star thing going -- even a crew of five roadies with head sets who ran around and worked the sound boards and everything else. Very impressive. There were probably 400 people there to see him, and he was in DC for two more days. A bigger crowd than Def Leppard has been getting on their tour lately, I think.

Anyway, I learned some good stuff, and it will certainly help me both in my own writing and in what I pass on to my students

Tufte is very much into simplicity -- stripping away graphics of anything that clutters the message. But he also values complexity, and thinks we should add more information to our graphics if that information is clear and helps readers/listeners understand our point. He gave one particularly relevent example, having to do with cancer statistics.

Tufte gave the example of a cancer patient who had just heard the bad news, and who naturally wants to know what the prognosis for her future might be, and so looks up survival statistics. A very realistic situation: this is someone who needs information fast, and who is not ina state to read unnecessary stuff. Tufte points out that a table in a mecial journal about cancer survival statistics does a decent job of presenting that information:

(Now, before I move on, let me make clear that the statistics in this example are 10 years old, pre-Rituxin for NHL, and that NHL is lumped as one cancer, and not the 30 different cancers that the term "NHL" actually represents....It's just used as an example, not as a source of facts about NHL. So don't even look at the numbers.)

Anyway, it's a good table if you're a patient who's very emotionally fragile and looking for clear information. Tufte points out that we tend to prefer things like PowerPoint templates for presenting information, since it allows us to add lots of color and effects and bells and whistles. But, says Tufte, if you used a PowerPoint template to create a graph that would visually represent those same clearly presented statistics, this is what you might get:

Now, he says, if your job is to provide useful information to a cancer patient, and that is what you provide, then you are doing a lousy job. You need to dig around to get to the information, especially the NHL statistics, which are in that weird triangle-looking thing on the right side. Simplicity is not a bad thing. Just because you can use lots of color and motion and other fancy graphics feature, doesn't mean you should. (He really doesn't like PowerPoint.)

So I thought that particular example was fascinating. He spoke to us mostly as creators of graphics, but also made the point that we are consumers of graphics, too, and we should demand clarity.

A nice example for my students.

(Tufte's whole discussion of cancer statistics is available at his web site. I want to make sure I give him credit for those graphics.)