Beer & evidence
Last Thursday and Friday I was in Chicago for Edward Tufte’s course “Envisioning Data and Information,” which I attended with my former student assistant Jacob Davis. The night before the course we met at Hopleaf. At 4:45 the place was almost empty; by 6:30 the place was, well, hopping. We enjoyed some great microbrews: Victory Pils, Van Hoesebrouk Gueze Old Tradition, Lagunitas Censored Copper Rich Ale, Founders Red Rye, Surly Bender, and North Coast Brother Thelonious. Of these, the Gueze was probably my favorite–I love that style and go back to it over and over–though the Founders was very good as well, with a nice crisp bite from the rye well-complemented by the strong bill of hops. The Brother Thelonious was powerful: deep, dark, malty, strongly flavorful, strongly alcoholic. Hopleaf has a small menu of high-grade bar food; frankly I wish I’d paid more attention to that. But it’s easy to get distracted in a place with so much good beer.
On the way to the El we happened upon an Ethopian restaurant. We stopped in front and I said to Jacob, “There ain’t no Ethopian restaurants in Macomb.” Understatement of the year. So it was time for meal #2, which was OK since I hadn’t had a lot of food at Hopleaf. Jacob had beef sambussa, I had a Two Brothers Bitter End, and we split some yellow lentils. And I still made it back downtown by 9:45.
The next morning Jacob met me at the Hilton around 9:00. We picked up our books–course admission includes Tufte’s big four–and started our warmup reading assignment, which was selections from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Visual Explanations. This was the first of many times Tufte self-exemplified (itself one of his core principles). Much of his presentation touched on or dealt explicitly with presentations–for most, PowerPoint. Tufte’s advice is to dump it, replacing sequences of low-resolution slides with a handout and technical discussion. That’s what he did. Basically, the books served as ET’s handouts (and he did provide a four-page as well); he referred to them over and over throughout the six hour course. For the first hour or so, he worked through several examples, discussing the principles they indicated; students followed along in the books. Tufte projected some images and showed some short films, but relied primarily on speaking. Quite often he showed a slide which was a two-page spread; after a moment (when everyone had a chance to find it) that would fade away given that attendees could follow along in the books. Not surprisingly, Tufte covered a lot of ground: the preparation of visuals in general using the famous Minard/Napoleon graphic he’s turned to several times; the design of visual interfaces, including a mockup of a new weather app for the iPhone; including complexity in design by enabling a tiered structure which shows more evidence upon a closer look (his maxim here is “to clarify, add detail); focusing on the content and its underlying intellectual metaphor instead of focusing on the medium; presenting quantified evidence whenever possible.
I’m glad I went to the course, even though there were times when Tufte was basically reading from the books, which I know very well. Beforehand he walked around the room asking folks “What do you do?” and signing books. I held out my dog-eared copy of Visual Display, and ET grinned when he saw all the sticky notes and page markers sticking out of it. And his excitement and enthusiasm was powerful; he practically jumped up and down when showing off his copy of Galileo’s Letters on Sunspots. Tufte presented some new material, and his presentation indicated some revisions and commentary on his work, particularly on the theoretically intense chapter “The fundamental principles of analytical design” in Beautiful Evidence. His riff on the iPhone was also quite interesting, and he spoke a little about his new project, the “quintet” referred to in BE (10), hinting that it might be a film, not a book. This in line with his “whatever it takes” principle: bring the content to the form, not the reverse. The only time I thought Tufte was out of his element was a brief digression on “minimal interfaces” reminiscent of Jef Raskin’s work (
The course also made me reconsider Beautiful Evidence, which I criticized for repetition of Tufte’s earlier work. In some ways that book and the course are very similar: someone new to Tufte would find both massively dense, full of new insights, even a little overwhelming in a positive way. Perhaps it isn’t meant to follow his other books, as I expected, but is more standalone, a comprehensive approach to understanding the role of evidence in presentations. Tufte has devoted quite a bit of effort to that subject, as shown by his work with the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the PowerPoint pamphlet which became part of Beautiful Evidence, understandable given the poor presentations it’s easy to find at any conference. Also, I hadn’t thought about using any of Tufte’s books as primary texts in technical communication courses: they seem too focused. But watching Tufte do just that makes me think I’ll have to try as well.
