Book Review: Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making
People who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, people who do study history have to watch as others make the same mistakes. Getting people to respond and react to important data is sales in a way. Selling the information that is needed to know can have huge consequences.
Edward R Tufte's short booklet goes through the Cholera epidemic and the space shuttle challenger. Two huge effecting events were affected by the people with data selling to other people about the data.
In both cases bunching the important data matters. In the first, it was the dates of people dying from Cholera. (before and after the removal of a water pump); the second was about the temperature of flights and the associated o-ring damage caused. In the first case, John Snow was successful in convincing his government to remove the water pipe saving countless lives. In the second case, the makers of the rocket were not able to convince the governing body not to launch the challenger causing disaster.
With lots of technical aspects about how to create great graphs, it was an enjoyable fun read that took no longer than a few days to do.
5/5 stars