Edward Tufte is a professor at Yale University who focuses upon data visualization, analytic design and statistical evidence. I recently attended instructed a course titled, "Presenting Data and Information" in Boston which examined the following topics (as posted from his website):
- fundamental strategies of analytical design
- evaluating evidence used in presentations
- statistical data: tables, graphics, and semi-graphics
- business, scientific, research, and financial presentations
- complexity and clarity
- effective presentations: on paper and in person
- interface design
- use of PowerPoint, video, overheads, and handouts
- multi-media, internet, and websites
- credibility of presentations
- animation and scientific visualizations
Why is this important information for teachers and educational leaders?
Edward Tufte thinks that PowerPoint is often misused for presentations as the software tends to have the creator elevate format over content. He expresses these views in an article published at Wired.com titled, "PowerPoint is Evil." His main point is this ubiquitous slide-based presentation software helps the speaker more than communicate the content to the audience.
He is also concerned over the educational impact on using PowerPoint in the classroom, "Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something." (Tufte) After listening to his presentation, I believe that Mr. Tufte's main concern is the lack of content able to be conveyed to an audience of learners using PowerPoint.
I stopped and thought about just how often PointPoint is used by teachers in a middle school classroom to enhance a lecture. My rough estimate is 2-3 times a week per teacher. That is approximately 8-12 classes of 25 students each. Over the course of an 180+ day school year, this adds up.
The course addressed six fundamental principals of analytic design essential for content-rich presentations.
Edward Tufte recommends using Sparklines embedded in documents to better convey visual data for an audience of learners. Sparkline is an information graphic, usually small in size but dense with data. Sparklines often display trends and changes over time associated with measurement.
He is also concerned over the educational impact on using PowerPoint in the classroom, "Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something." (Tufte) After listening to his presentation, I believe that Mr. Tufte's main concern is the lack of content able to be conveyed to an audience of learners using PowerPoint.
I stopped and thought about just how often PointPoint is used by teachers in a middle school classroom to enhance a lecture. My rough estimate is 2-3 times a week per teacher. That is approximately 8-12 classes of 25 students each. Over the course of an 180+ day school year, this adds up.
The course addressed six fundamental principals of analytic design essential for content-rich presentations.
- Comparisons: this and that
- Assessments of causality: cause and effect structure
- Multivariate analysis: three or more
- Integration of evidence, use of relevant data
- Documentation to ensure creditability (meta data)
- Content, reasoning
Edward Tufte recommends using Sparklines embedded in documents to better convey visual data for an audience of learners. Sparkline is an information graphic, usually small in size but dense with data. Sparklines often display trends and changes over time associated with measurement.
Edward Tufte describes the term sparkline as "small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers and images." (Tufte, Beautiful Evidence)
The website jQuery Sparklines helps users create Sparklines. This website enables users to create multiple types of Sparklines such as: Box Plots, Pie Charts, Bullet Graphs, Discrete, Tristate Charts, bar Charts and Line Charts. See the examples of Sparklines below:
Throughout the course Edward Tufte offered specific advice to better present data and provided several memorable quotes:
This website allows users to access a google charting tool (google chart API) to generate charts and sparklines to embed in documents. I find them simple and elegant such as:
- "All real data has wrinkles in it. Otherwise it smells of data cherry picking."
- "Find good examples [of non-fiction quantitative data display] in the wild such as google news, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the journal of Nature."
- "Look at the amount of data shown on the Sports page or in the weather section of major newspapers next time someone tells you that you have too much data in a presentation."
Another website tool which allows users to create sparklines is at http://www.style.org/chartapi/sparklines.
This website allows users to access a google charting tool (google chart API) to generate charts and sparklines to embed in documents. I find them simple and elegant such as:
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