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Review
Well written and innovative. . . . The book is fascinating with its wide view, including introductions to historical personalities, analyses of statistical paradoxes, and well-documented discussions of actual uses of visual data to mislead viewers. -- "Choice
During a dairyman's strike in 19th century New England, when there was suspicion of milk being watered down, Henry David Thoreau wrote, 'Sometimes circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing; like when you find a trout in the milk.' Howard Wainer uses this as a metaphor in his entertaining, informative, and persuasive book on graphs, or the visual communication of information. Sometimes a well-designed graph tells a very convincing story. -- Raymond N. Greenwell, MAA Online
Wainer's wit and broad intellect make this a very entertaining book. -- Linda Pickle, ,"American Statistician
[A] personalized and readable jaunt through the history of charting. -- "The Economist
This book may be seen as a chronology of graphic date presentation beginning with Playfair to the present and pointing toward the future. . . . It is a remarkable value that every practitioner of statistics can afford. -- Malcolm James Ree, Personnel Psychology
Graphic Discovery is a welcome addition to the literature on investigation and effective communication through graphic display. It contains a wealth of information and opinions, which are motivated and illustrated through a plethora of real life examples which can be easily incorporated into any educational setting: classroom, seminar, self-enhancement. . . . This book will be useful to and it can be mastered by a diverse readership. -- Thomas E. Bradstreet, Computational Statistics
During a dairyman's strike in 19th century New England, when there was suspicion of milk being watered down, Henry David Thoreau wrote, 'Sometimes circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing; like when you find a trout in the milk.' Howard Wainer uses this as a metaphor in his entertaining, informative, and persuasive book on graphs, or the visual communication of information. Sometimes a well-designed graph tells a very convincing story. -- Raymond N. Greenwell, MAA Online
Wainer's wit and broad intellect make this a very entertaining book. -- Linda Pickle, ,"American Statistician
[A] personalized and readable jaunt through the history of charting. -- "The Economist
This book may be seen as a chronology of graphic date presentation beginning with Playfair to the present and pointing toward the future. . . . It is a remarkable value that every practitioner of statistics can afford. -- Malcolm James Ree, Personnel Psychology
Graphic Discovery is a welcome addition to the literature on investigation and effective communication through graphic display. It contains a wealth of information and opinions, which are motivated and illustrated through a plethora of real life examples which can be easily incorporated into any educational setting: classroom, seminar, self-enhancement. . . . This book will be useful to and it can be mastered by a diverse readership. -- Thomas E. Bradstreet, Computational Statistics
Product Description
Good graphs make complex problems clear. From the weather forecast to the Dow Jones average, graphs are so ubiquitous today that it is hard to imagine a world without them. Yet they are a modern invention. This book is the first to comprehensively plot humankind's fascinating efforts to visualize data, from a key seventeenth-century precursor--England's plague-driven initiative to register vital statistics--right up to the latest advances. In a highly readable, richly illustrated story of invention and inventor that mixes science and politics, intrigue and scandal, revolution and shopping, Howard Wainer validates Thoreau's observation that circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk.
The story really begins with the eighteenth-century origins of the art, logic, and methods of data display, which emerged, full-grown, in William Playfair's landmark 1786 trade atlas of England and Wales. The remarkable Scot singlehandedly popularized the atheoretical plotting of data to reveal suggestive patterns--an achievement that foretold the graphic explosion of the nineteenth century, with atlases published across the observational sciences as the language of science moved from words to pictures.
Next come succinct chapters illustrating the uses and abuses of this marvelous invention more recently, from a murder trial in Connecticut to the Vietnam War's effect on college admissions. Finally Wainer examines the great twentieth-century polymath John Wilder Tukey's vision of future graphic displays and the resultant methods--methods poised to help us make sense of the torrent of data in our information-laden world.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"Getting information from a table is like extracting sunbeams from a cucumber" (Farquhar and Farquhar). Read the first page
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9 reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Haphazard and poorly written
26 Aug 2006
Format:Hardcover
I ordered this book with great anticipation. I had read the previous review which calls it the best mathematical book of 2005. I was sorely disappointed. The writing is extremely wordy and many of the digressive footnotes served the author better than they serve the reader. The author is overly proud of his having known John Tukey and he also subjects us to a tediously long example involving his son's Princeton acceptance letter.
I think the author is actually a fine fellow who genuinely loves graphs and charts, and he does manage to present many classic pieces of graph design advice in a congenial way. But the essays are rather disconnected. The author is fairly good on mathematical graph design but his ventures into related issues such as collation and ordering and document design are not successful and his lack of expertise in these areas is painful.
The book ends with a very odd twenty-page biographical dictionary, which partly covers people prominent in the history of graphing, but also includes random folks who just seemed to have caught the author's attention or who were mentioned peripherally in examples in the text, such as Seneca, Henry David Thoreau, and all (I think) of the current American Supreme Court Justices.
Overall, this book is a kind of brain dump which feels like reading the backup copy of the author's future-projects file. There are other better places to start learning about graph design, including Tufte, Cleveland, or even the old standby "How to Lie With Statistics."
I think the author is actually a fine fellow who genuinely loves graphs and charts, and he does manage to present many classic pieces of graph design advice in a congenial way. But the essays are rather disconnected. The author is fairly good on mathematical graph design but his ventures into related issues such as collation and ordering and document design are not successful and his lack of expertise in these areas is painful.
The book ends with a very odd twenty-page biographical dictionary, which partly covers people prominent in the history of graphing, but also includes random folks who just seemed to have caught the author's attention or who were mentioned peripherally in examples in the text, such as Seneca, Henry David Thoreau, and all (I think) of the current American Supreme Court Justices.
Overall, this book is a kind of brain dump which feels like reading the backup copy of the author's future-projects file. There are other better places to start learning about graph design, including Tufte, Cleveland, or even the old standby "How to Lie With Statistics."
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Review of Graphic Discovery - Howard Wainer
7 Feb 2005
Format:Hardcover
A delightful and thought-provoking book on statistical graphics. Wainer provides compact case studies of how graphical presentations such as bar charts, plots, and scattergrams can lead to important discoveries. The most compelling examples show how a published graphic could be dramatically improved to avoid misleading interpretations or make new discoveries. The most entertaining parts are his vignettes of historical figures, such as his twin heroes of William Playfair and John Tukey. I enjoyed Wainer's sardonic wit, personal anecdotes, and popular culture references, but the real gift was the clarity of thinking and the wise guidance about deep issues in statistics, data mining, and information visualization.
Ben Shneiderman, College Park, MD
[...]
Ben Shneiderman, College Park, MD
[...]
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
THE BEST MATHEMATICAL BOOK OF 2005
10 Feb 2005
Format:Hardcover
You may think it's too early to already be picking the best math book of 2005, but I can't imagine I will regret this choice. Wainer's book is accessible to people with a minimal statistical background, with its fascinating voyage through the history of data displays. It provides interesting biographical information on some of the characters we meet along the voyage. Then it finally looks to the future direction of data analysis.
I can't imagine any mathophile, and particularly any teacher of statistics at any level, who won't find this book a treasure trove of delights. Highly recommended.
I can't imagine any mathophile, and particularly any teacher of statistics at any level, who won't find this book a treasure trove of delights. Highly recommended.
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