Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Comment: Nutshell review - This is an excellent book on chart design and the effective presentation of information. Beautifully illustrated with in-depth insight and research.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just the facts, ma'am (and how to present them)
Comment: Mr. Tufte's book is like nothing I ever read before. At first I was put off by his uber self-confidence, but as I read the book further, I realized that the self-confidence was not out of place.
In an entertaining way, with splendid examples and splendid anti-examples, this book gets to the core of presenting honest and dense data and eliminating all pretense. Wait 'til you grasp the concept of "Small Multiples" and just as importantly, when not to use a graph.
Before I was finished the book, I revamped a couple of my charts and upgraded one to showing multiple variables across multiple years using "Small Multiples".
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Landmark Book on Conveying Information Graphically
Comment: I own all of Edward Tufte's books, and regularly order his booklets for my MBA students. The reason is simple: to make good decisions, and to help others make good decisions, one must convey data as information and not simply as numbers, words, or even pictures. Business periodicals regularly violate the admonitions we learned in our introductory statistics courses, including failing to use zero as the bottom of any scale (these periodicals don't use zero in order to exaggerate changes). The reason that intelligent people convey data inappropriately is either to deliberately distort it, or because they've failed to read Tufte's books.
Once you've purchased this first book by Tufte, you will never look at charts or other graphical displays without a jaundiced eye. You will also will begin to be more honest in how you convey information to others. You will make better decisions, and you will raise the standard for other communicators and decision makers. Life and death decisions do get made on the basis of data, and not just in the sciences and medicine. Buy this book and you will have a very tough time putting it down.
Aneil Mishra
[...]
Customer Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS
Comment: This is Tufte's best book in my opinion, maybe because this was his first book I bought. I use this book weekly. I learned many good lessons from Tufte.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An inspirational experience
Comment: Everybody should read a book like "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and I do not mean the professionals in the field but really everybody. Tufte really opens your mind and makes you aware of the possibly malevolent or just misleading representations of data we are faced with every day on magazines, newspapers, TV and the web.
Summary: Excellent
Comment: Nutshell review - This is an excellent book on chart design and the effective presentation of information. Beautifully illustrated with in-depth insight and research.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just the facts, ma'am (and how to present them)
Comment: Mr. Tufte's book is like nothing I ever read before. At first I was put off by his uber self-confidence, but as I read the book further, I realized that the self-confidence was not out of place.
In an entertaining way, with splendid examples and splendid anti-examples, this book gets to the core of presenting honest and dense data and eliminating all pretense. Wait 'til you grasp the concept of "Small Multiples" and just as importantly, when not to use a graph.
Before I was finished the book, I revamped a couple of my charts and upgraded one to showing multiple variables across multiple years using "Small Multiples".
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Landmark Book on Conveying Information Graphically
Comment: I own all of Edward Tufte's books, and regularly order his booklets for my MBA students. The reason is simple: to make good decisions, and to help others make good decisions, one must convey data as information and not simply as numbers, words, or even pictures. Business periodicals regularly violate the admonitions we learned in our introductory statistics courses, including failing to use zero as the bottom of any scale (these periodicals don't use zero in order to exaggerate changes). The reason that intelligent people convey data inappropriately is either to deliberately distort it, or because they've failed to read Tufte's books.
Once you've purchased this first book by Tufte, you will never look at charts or other graphical displays without a jaundiced eye. You will also will begin to be more honest in how you convey information to others. You will make better decisions, and you will raise the standard for other communicators and decision makers. Life and death decisions do get made on the basis of data, and not just in the sciences and medicine. Buy this book and you will have a very tough time putting it down.
Aneil Mishra
[...]
Customer Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS
Comment: This is Tufte's best book in my opinion, maybe because this was his first book I bought. I use this book weekly. I learned many good lessons from Tufte.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An inspirational experience
Comment: Everybody should read a book like "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and I do not mean the professionals in the field but really everybody. Tufte really opens your mind and makes you aware of the possibly malevolent or just misleading representations of data we are faced with every day on magazines, newspapers, TV and the web.