I remember getting Tufte's book ("The Visual Display of Quantitative Information") and being really excited because I'd heard all these great things about it, and then being disappointed because it had no real justification for its claims. The "data ink" thing is a typical example. I'm willing to accept the general concept that many graphs are too cluttered. But there's no particular reason to suppose that quantifying the proportion of "data ink" and trying to optimize it is the best way to handle that. A lot of the book is just taking subjective aesthetic judgements and trying to frame them as some kind of objective truth.
If we really wanted reliable guidelines on how to format graphs, we would want to ground them in psychological research that actually demonstrates that, for instance, some versions result in better understanding or recall of certain information. But as far as I can see Tufte's book makes no attempt to do this. (Perhaps he or those who built on his works did it later on?)
William Cleveland is who you are looking for. He actually did studies like you are looking for on the display of information and its relation to psychological perception. His work is authoritative and predates Tufte significantly. I’m not sure why anyone pays attention to Tufte at all except that he is good at marketing himself. He is kind of the antithesis of quantitative information in that sense. All style and no substance.
BrenBarn · · focus · HN ↗
If we really wanted reliable guidelines on how to format graphs, we would want to ground them in psychological research that actually demonstrates that, for instance, some versions result in better understanding or recall of certain information. But as far as I can see Tufte's book makes no attempt to do this. (Perhaps he or those who built on his works did it later on?)
burpingtree · · focus · HN ↗