Edward Tufte

Edward Rolf Tufte (pronounced tʌf.ti ) ( born March 14, 1942 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American information scientist and a graphic designer.

Life

Tufte studied after finishing school at the Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills 1960 Statistics and Political Science at Stanford University and in 1965 received his doctorate at Yale University. After graduating, he was from 1967 to 1971 Professor at Princeton University.

Tufte was from 1971 until his retirement in 2004 professor of statistics, graphic design and political science at Yale University and is a specialist in the design and presentation of information graphics, such as number of photos and diagrams. He is a member of the American Statistical Society and had fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He has been awarded seven honorary doctorates.

Work

His main focus is the visual communication of information: information visualization, information graphics, information design and visual education

He coined the term " Chartjunk " (such as " chart junk" or " dirt diagram " ) to identify useless, informationless or informationsverdunkelnde components of overviews. It calls to refrain in visual representations of any decorative elements and ink to be used only to convey really important data, analyze and interpret. In this context, he used the term "data ink ".

Tufte Sparklines developed a graphical method to illustrate changes and trends (such as changes in temperature or exchange or market prices ) to save space. The sparkline is characterized by the development, but is in contrast to the usual graphics vertically barely above the height of the print line also.

In Europe he was known more widely through his criticism of PowerPoint. He criticized that PowerPoint Determine the style of thinking and thus leads to loss of information. Quote: " PowerPoint is evil ." Among other things, he argues that poorly prepared PowerPoint presentations have the information impeded within NASA and so were for the crash of the space shuttle Columbia with the cause.

His books are designed typographically by himself and apply the design as exemplary. None of his works has been translated into German. On his website longer extracts can be found in the books - as a graphic - just exactly as he wanted to have them printed.

  • Political Control of the Economy, 1980, ISBN 0-691-02180-5
  • Envisioning Information, 1990, ISBN 0-9613921-1-8
  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2002, ISBN 0-9613921-4-2
  • The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2004, ISBN 0-9613921-5-0
  • Beautiful Evidence, 2006, ISBN 0-9613921-7-7
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