tufte-workshop.txt

"there are only two industries calling their customers users"

maps of cancer in the us - multivariables/prob 1k data points but not clutter
  fix the clutter. Clutter is in the presentation, not in the data.

tables - espn has 500 numbers
  have we suddenly got dumber because we got to work?
  look at financial tables, weather tables, sports..

7 elements on a page? paper: the magic number 7
  well google news/new york times/wall street journal etc all have 300+links on their home page
  and people visit them every single day

"navigation problem that you have made for them"
  avoid scrolling/flipping pages
  iphone/ipad got high res screen so they can present a lot of information

think about the cancer map - 95% was probably irrelevant for you
  but we don't take it out. supergraphics - make it about the data, about the content
  and not about yourself or the reader

env info pg 56 - hospital bill - amazing supergraphic for a talk on hospital bills
  don't let presentations corrupt your material
  until everyone has ipads or similars use the high technology PA-PER. handouts
  and don't be afraid of giving out your material before the presentation
  stop with the authoritative way of giving your data - no wonder it's called "powerpoint"

avoid questions when giving a presentation
  viewer wants to listen to himself first, then you, then others in the room

powerpoint has a slow bandwidth - corporation cost
  cut it down by using high res data, more talking. 25-30% shorter meetings
  make your presentation software word, not powerpoint
  go straight for the content. do not mention methodology or mode of production

"if you have an interest in OS it's unnatural"
  the first GUI had no OS. want to take a picture? the editor opens within the document
  everything is integrated the way it should be. no apps!
  profit made it go the other way

da vinci - amazing composition of text+illustration
  it's about an arm, not the medium

columbia spaceship - flew for two weeks with a basketball sized hole on the wing
  NASA suspected, asked boing to do an analysis, they responded a powerpoint presentation
  all engineers called it "the boing powerpoint presentation". not the "is everyone going to die next week presentation"
  terrible incongruence between the intelectual task and what they're describing it
  name your presentation after the content.

sparklines - beautiful evidence page 47

hospitals are full of displays showing lines blipping
  no one pays attention anymore
  so when something bad happens they need to use sounds/alarms other cues
  when everything is emphasized nothing is emphasized

joke on foreign economy:
  yo need to know two things: if the dollar goes down, that's bad
  if the dollar goes up, that's bad

more sparklines on 50 - thousands of numbers compressed in a few inches
  gill sans/trebuchet is a good face for tables
  stock market - they're all the same. and you're debating between vanguard and fidelity
  mutual fund companies make 100 funds a year. cherry pick the 5 best after a period and make that their index

best visualization comes from nature - papers
  DNA had a page and a half. page 52

Rules on presenting information:
  1) Don't make it original, make it right. Look at other examples and copy it
  2) Make tables performance tables - nouns on lines
    - Never order alphabetically, find order
  3) Use a supergraphic. Put everything in a single HD, consended image
  4) Intelectual model. Sentences, heavy data - look at newspapers for inspiration

Approach data like a scientist would approach nature
  Data mining is for people with a lot of data but no ideas
  Have a theory, a metaphor that allows for a more systematic look into the data
  And also replicate that in another set of data that is truly independent

Endless redundancy of the world vs endless redundancy of our databases
  Analogy: security camera. new frames don't usually give you information
  Gets worse on the internet: tremendous amounts of people on the internet, talking about other people on the internet
  In access logs we see spiders, bots - internet talking to itself - scrapping is another source of redundancy

Another way to deal with this is by developing a sense of the relevant
  Newspaper editors must have it. Same for company leaders.

"Touchscreens have no hands" - essay on industrial design (on his website)

Local optimization is globally pessimizing
  Analogy with ui - menus get bigger as the mouse gets closer. then scrollbars/icons want it too
  As a whole the interface feels much worse

Principles of analytical design - Beautiful evd page 127
  - Show comparisons, contrasts, differences (the line thickness)
  - Causality, Mechanism, Explanation (the temperature scale)
  - Multivariate Analysis - the world is complicated, show it - show more than 1 or 2 variables (they have six on the map: size of the map, arm location, direction it's going, temperatures...)
  - Completely integrate words, numbers, images, diagrams, everything. Don't ask how to use visualization methods to explain projects, ask how to explain projects. Do whatever it takes.
  - Credibility (map has measurement scales, data sources, is signed up etc - Minard was against the war. Didn't want to jeopardize his work)
  - Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance and integrity of their content. The only way to make design better is to get more content. The point of design is to avoid screwing it up.

3D
  The first book bringing geometry to English languages - printed in the 1600s - has 3d models made with paper
  Example on page 16 of envisioning information
  Architects know about this for a long time

Galileo
  Other examples of exploring design - Galileo (Envisioning info 120-121)
  Drawings of sun spots - easy to compare.
  Make comparisons adjacent in space instead of stacked in time. Principle 7!

Because of that, whenever people have to make real time decisions they have multiple monitors
  Nuclear plants, airports, traders, police, etc