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I had the opportunity yesterday to attend a one-day course taught by former Yale and Princeton professor Edward Tufte. The New York Times calls him “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.”

Although the seminar itself was a little underwhelming, the content was great. And because Tufte’s main point is that content is all that matters, it kind of works for him. You gotta give him some credit for getting 300 people paying $380 for a one-day lecture that he’ll do 16 times around the country in the next few months. And he’s been doing this for years. Cha-ching.

The four books he wrote—included with registration—are really all you need. Tufte spent the majority of his time reading and referring to them anyway.

Visual Explanations

Envisioning Information

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Beautiful Evidence

A few highlights for me:

• In good data presentations, nothing should be able to be erased. In other words, eliminate non-relevant information that doesn’t support your point.

• At the same time, include as much information as possible to support your data. Every presentation of data should provide reasons to believe. Your audience isn’t dumb.
• If you’re tempted to remove stuff from your presentation because it’s looking too cluttered, it’s a design problem not a content problem. Overcome the clutter with better design.
• Those boxes on org charts (the black lines around people’s names) mean nothing. Eliminate them.
• Presenting data–or any presentation–should not be authoritarian. Your points are not meant to give you power, they’re meant to help educate the audience. Why do we do the slow “reveal” in our presentations? We should send everything we have ahead of time so people can start to get familiar with the content.
• Get people to use their own cognitive flow and style. Genuine exploration. It’s how we learn.
• Anytime you’re making presentations, continually come around to these three questions: 1) What is the problem? 2) Who cares? 3) What’s my solution?
• Find or develop a “super graphic” that you use all the time and continually refer to.
• Don’t pitch. Instead, explain and inform.
• Use whatever it takes to show the data. Three-dimensional objects are the best when you can.
• Put your name on your work. People make presentations, not committees or boards or teams. Individual names lend credit and provide accountability.
• Beware of featureitis, the disease that says more bells and whistles are better.

One of the most impressive examples of a good data presentation is the graphic from Napoleon’s ill-fated Moscow campaign by Mindard. Wow.

For those unfamiliar with Tufte, he hates PowerPoint with a vengeance and is full of reasons why.

I look forward to spending some time with Tufte’s books and digesting more of the information. They’re a gold-mine of wisdom and examples.

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