title: Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
author:  Edward R. Tufte 
description: With <I>Visual Explanations</I>, Edward R. Tufte adds a third volume to his indispensable series on information display. The first, <I><A HREF="/exec/obidos/ISBN=096139210X/${0}">The Visual Display of Quantitative Information</A>,</I> which focuses on charts and graphs that display numerical information, virtually defined the field. The second, <I><A HREF="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0961392118/${0}">Envisioning Information</A>,</I> explores similar territory but with an emphasis on maps and cartography. <I>Visual Explanations</I> centers on dynamic data--information that changes over time. (Tufte has described the three books as being about, respectively, &quot;pictures of numbers, pictures of nouns, and pictures of verbs.&quot;) <P> Like its predecessors, <I>Visual Explanations</I> is both intellectually stimulating and beautiful to behold. Tufte, a self-publisher, takes extraordinary pains with design and production. The book ranges through a variety of topics, including the explosion of the space shuttle <I>Challenger</I> (which could have been prevented, Tufte argues, by better information display on the part of the rocket's engineers), magic tricks, a cholera epidemic in 19th-century London, and the principle of using &quot;the smallest effective difference&quot; to display distinctions in data. Throughout, Tufte presents ideas with crystalline clarity and illustrates them in exquisitely rendered samples.
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  Man-size in Marble  
    
  
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  # Man-size in Marble
  
  
  ### E. Nesbit
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
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  Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect
  people to believe it. Nowadays a "rational explanation" is required before
  belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the "rational explanation"
  which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my life's
  tragedy. It is held that we were "under a delusion," Laura and I, on that 31st
  of October; and that this supposition places the whole matter on a
  satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has
  heard my story, how far this is an "explanation," and in what sense it is
  "rational." There were three who took part in this: Laura and I and another
  man. The other man still lives, and can speak to the truth of the least
  credible part of my story.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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