To start off my project in Data Visualization, I started reading Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information." The book is split into two halves, Graphical Practice and Theory of Data Graphics. Graphical Practice dealt with data visualizations from a practical and real-world perspective, specifically addressing their unique ability to convey complex relationships between data variables, and how often this is exploited in modern journalism. For a student who was planning on approaching this project from a purely theoretical perspective (primarily due to time restraints), I was pleasantly surprised to encounter these ideas as my introduction. Tufte lists six guidelines for data visualization integrity, as follows:
55 - Graphical Integrity - The representation of number, as physically measured on the surface of the graphic itself, should be directly proportional to the numerical quantities represented.
55 - Clear, detailed, and thorough labeling should be used to defeat graphical distortion and ambiguity. Write out explanations of the data on the graphic itself. Label important events in the data.
60 - Show data variation, not design variation.
67 - In time-series displays of money, deflated and standardized units of monetary measurements are nearly always better than nominal units.
70 - The number of information-carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number of dimensions in the data.
73 - Graphics must not quote data out of context.
I have a friend working on his Masters in Journalism, who is currently trying to create a set of minimum standards for journalistic integrity. (Jonathan Stray, Journalism Commons) My friends' work and Tufte's guidelines dovetail nicely together, and I was pleased to have a reminder of the real-world application and repercussions of data visualization before heading into the theory.
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