Talk:Edward Tufte

message: Tufte became well-known by publishing his harsh criticism of Microsoft PowerPoint.
I am certain that he was extremely well-known, even revered, in the graphic design community well before his PowerPoint essay.  I believe it was The Visual Display of Quantitative Information that put him on the map.  Anyone know for sure?  If not, I'll do some research.  -- Worrydream 06:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, VDQI is what really put him on the map, though, to be clear, he was a tenured professor at Princeton by 32. He was successful before VDQI. Niels Olson (talk) 18:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: His 1990 book, Envisioning Information, was what split the universe open and most designers joined the cult. Tufte is God. --Knulclunk 22:58, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Became well-known because of PowerPoint essay?? 

message: Can someone who knows put information about how to pronounce "Tufte" on the page?
Capybara 08:07, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: From the article:
: He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences.
Here "Guggenheim Foundation" links to Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. I guess what was really meant is the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. — Tobias Bergemann 14:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  So fix it. WP:BOLD Sbwoodside 19:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You could have fixed it, sbwoodside. Because, you didn't, I did. DCDuring 14:25, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right Guggenheim Foundation? 

message: There's a certain irony in the fact that bulleted text is used to convey the nature of Tufte's critique of PowerPoint, isn't there?--Ggbroad 01:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's cute.  Although to be fair, as used here this application may be one of the least arguable... Baccyak4H (Yak!) 20:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

text: However, Hubert Knoblauch has argued that this practice reduces a rich communicative setting to mere slides.
because it makes no sense. If Tufte's prescribed practice is followed, the setting is not reduced to mere slides. Knoblauch must have written something else, or been misunderstood by the editor who added the reference. The cited paper is not available to me (behind a paywall), so I cannot correct the sentence, so move it here so that someone who has access to it might check what it actually says. MayerG (talk) 07:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism of PowerPoint

message: The quote from the article "Tufte argues strongly against the inclusion of any decoration in visual presentations of information" is a misrepresentation of his POV.  In the citation request: Edward Tufte. "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information". Graphics Press, 2001. . Chapters 5 and 6 in particular was provided as the source. 
On page 13 of the book, one of the bullet items under "Graphical displays should" list "Serve a reasonably clear purpose: descriptions, exploration, tabulation, or decoration." On page 59 "Sometimes decoration can help editorialize about the substance of the graphic".
There needs to be a real quote here if someone wants to piggyback a controversial POV on the name of Edward Tufte. Oicumayberight 03:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that the bias of wikipedia editors have crept back into this section with this statement: "He claims that ink should only be used to convey and display significant data." This is why we need an actual quote. Particular use of the word "only" in this statement means exclusively and is contrary to an actual Edward Tufte quote from the book: "Sometimes decorations can help editorialize about the substance of the graphic." Unless someone finds an actual quote from Edward Tufte that shows that he meant "only" or "exclusively", the statement should be removed. Oicumayberight (talk) 17:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed misrepresentation of Tufte's POV

message: His Yale personal page is now simply a lk to [http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ his publishing house, i guess. --Jerzy•t 21:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Still at Yale? 

message: The sparklines are rather difficult to see -- unless you know what you're looking for, the sparklines appear to be absent at first. I'll look at his site for another example, though I'm fairly sure he usually favors gray for sparklines anyway. Seijihyouronka (talk) 20:30, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I updated the sparklines as well as the associated table.  The line itself was made clearer by thickening it with a dark gray color rather than black (even though Tufte doesn't "prefer" gray as far as I can tell).  Also added were color-coded data elements for the opening/high/low points.  The table was updated to reflect changes to the line and new data elements.  The sparkline and table now closer reflect Tufte's examples in Beautiful Evidence (p. 50).  For those who don't have the book, a draft of the sparkline content is found in a sparkline thread at Tufte's site. Arsinventi (talk) 21:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed the sparklines table. While a masterwork of novel wikiformatting, its outsize visual presence overstates the significance of sparklines in a long and varied career. It is a recency bias gone too far. Niels Olson (talk) 23:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sparklines 

message: Probably by himself and his followers. After all Mr. Tufte seems to be good in presenting - himself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.176.0.55 (talk • contribs) 
: So fix it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:46, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I partly agree with this initial comment, and I fixed some of it. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 20:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I know Professor Tufte reasonably well. I am quite certain he has never touched the page for fear of exactly OP's complaint, and has expressed some concern over how it is written. Niels Olson (talk) 18:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

text:  Doesn't make it sound like less of one. --130.132.173.45 (talk) 20:33, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I know him slightly.  While he is not particularly modest, he's modest enough not to write cr*p like, "His work habits are forward-looking and he is intensely critical in the self-editing process…"  This reads like the work of an acolyte.  However, I don't like to start revert wars so I'm not deleting the offending section. 67.173.10.34 (talk) 08:04, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is written like an advertisement 

message: His résumé says BS. Wikipedia says BA. Wikipedia's always wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.59.79.70 (talk) 02:01, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There are sources out there saying both, and even some saying he got an MA. But I agree his resume is probably reliable here. I've corrected it, and cited the White House as a source. --Avenue (talk) 13:11, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  BS or BA 

message: * http://eagereyes.org/criticism/edward-tufte-one-day-course
* http://wehrintheworld.blogspot.fr/2009/03/edward-tufte-course-notes-and-reactions.html
Yug (talk) 03:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review of his class

message: Democracy Now has video of Aaron Swartz's memorial service, at which Edward Tufte made a couple of claims which may or may not be noteworthy (or true):
# In the early 1960s, he was one of the first phone pheakers.
# When caught by AT&T, he and AT&T resolved the dispute amicably, without legal action.
# He recently related this story in an email to JSTOR co-founder William G. Bowen.
# Bowen then "did the right thing" and got JSTOR to seek an amicable, extralegal resolution of its dispute with Swartz.
A commenter on a blog post about Tufte's statements at the memorial service disputes the validity of the first claim. Without confirmation, I don't think it'd be appropriate to report these any of these things in the article just yet. But it might be something to keep an eye out for. If it is reported further, with any confirmation from AT&T, Bowen or JSTOR, it could probably be added. —mjb (talk) 23:48, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statements at Aaron Swartz memorial service 

message: He's mentioned in the wiki article about the Challenger disaster, and he's centered in a controversy regarding the assignment of the responsibility for the failure to stop the launch due to cold weather and the danger that presented to the rocket booster's o-rings.  Effectively, he's blaming the engineers from Morton Thiokol, and they are saying Tufte is lying.  I'm inclined to believe this as well.  In any case, he's centered on the worst US space disaster in history, and some mention ought to be included in the article here.  Jonny Quick (talk) 08:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Citations?  50.179.252.14 (talk) 02:11, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morton Thiokol and O-Rings 

message: Could you have a look at this effort, here, to use clade diagrams to summarize pharma business acquisitions. My take at present is that the images created are devoid of standard quantitative meaning—nothing is captured by vertical and horizontal line lengths, as far as I can tell—and so they are a misapplication of this maths/graphic presentation method. Moreover, I argue that they are misleading (presenting a time axis, but not making spacing of events proportionate to the historical time differences), much harder to maintain (consider adding entries to a std Table versus this graphic), more likely to diminish article quality (in their ambiguity of content, again, over a std Table with clear headings), and therefore practically amenable to decay as a result. I would add to this, in this esteemed context, that they would make those who trained us, and other purists in methodology and meaning (and ET more generally), turn in their graves/beds. After having a look at the User page and at a couple of pages linked on that sandbox page, leave your opinion here, regarding the overall effort? Thanks for your opinion. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 01:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  For those with any knowledge of clade presentations 

message: Still no infp about his latest book - "Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth"
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/seeing-with-fresh-eyes
Please add. Bagfinder (talk) 18:55, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth