Beautiful Evidence

Ok, this isn't directly related to the purpose of this blog, but I've been a fan of Edward Tufte's work for some time now, and this warrants a post.

For those of you punters out there looking for light in the visual display of data darkness, Tufte's new book, Beautiful Evidence is the answer to your problems.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tufte's work, he's a Professor at Yale University, specialising in graphic design, political economy, and statistics. He coined the term 'chartjunk', referring to meaningless, and non-informative elements of graphical displays. In my mind, however, he is most famous for his harsh criticism of Microsoft's Powerpoint presentation software, in his essay 'The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint', where he gives Powerpoint's emergent properties a good ribbing.

So, what's the relevance to BI? Well, the way that we present data to information consumers is crucial. At the extreme, we can present the same data in two different formats, which could lead to two different decisions! The way we frame our data, and present it to users should be of the utmost importance to developers. The way we present, or 'frame' our information should be an extremely important consideration for those developing DSS, BI and information systems in general, as it concerns the impact of the structure of information displayed on human information processing.

Please, someone, explain to me the benefit of a 3-dimensional doughnut-shaped pie chart?! We need to be clear, to the point, and avoid confusion. The decision making process in complex enough.

The more we can learn on effectively presenting data, the better placed information consumers will be to make better decisions.

More can be found on his website.