22 Facts About Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization.

Edward Tufte grew up in Beverly Hills, California, where his father was a longtime city official, and he graduated from Beverly Hills High School.

Edward Tufte received a BS and MS in statistics from Stanford University and a PhD in political science from Yale.

Edward Tufte's dissertation, completed in 1968, was titled The Civil Rights Movement and Its Opposition.

Edward Tufte was then hired by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where he taught courses in political economy and data analysis while publishing three quantitatively inclined political science books.

In 1975, while at Princeton, Tufte was asked to teach a statistics course to a group of journalists who were visiting the school to study economics.

Edward Tufte developed a set of readings and lectures on statistical graphics, which he further developed in joint seminars he taught with renowned statistician John Tukey, a pioneer in the field of information design.

Edward Tufte financed the work by taking out a second mortgage on his home.

Edward Tufte is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Edward Tufte has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Edward Tufte's writing is important in such fields as information design and visual literacy, which deal with the visual communication of information.

Edward Tufte coined the word chartjunk to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays.

Edward Tufte uses the term "data-ink ratio" to argue against using excessive decoration in visual displays of quantitative information.

Edward Tufte encourages the use of data-rich illustrations that present all available data.

Edward Tufte uses several historical examples to make his case.

Edward Tufte has criticized the way Microsoft PowerPoint is typically used.

Edward Tufte cites the way PowerPoint was used by NASA engineers in the events leading to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster as an example of PowerPoint's many problems.

Edward Tufte believes that this is the most efficient method of transferring knowledge from the presenter to the audience and then the rest of the meeting is devoted to discussion and debate.

One method Edward Tufte encourages to allow quick visual comparison of multiple series is the small multiple, a chart with many series shown on a single pair of axes that can often be easier to read when displayed as several separate pairs of axes placed next to each other.

Edward Tufte suggests this is particularly helpful when the series are measured on quite different vertical scales, but over the same range on the horizontal x-axis.

Edward Tufte explains the sparkline as a kind of "word" that conveys rich information without breaking the flow of a sentence or paragraph made of other "words" both visual and conventional.

Beyond his academic endeavors over the years, Edward Tufte has created sculptures, often large outdoor ones made of metal or stone, which were first primarily exhibited on his own rural Connecticut property.