Reading Response – Assignment 1

Tufte Article:

This article seems pretty straight-forward, and could probably be condensed down into one sentence. But I think that the concept of data ink is interesting. He failed to mention color in his article, which can play a key role in organization. He talks about a bar and how it represents the data in 6 different ways. He says that if you eliminate 5 out of 6 it represents the height, it will still indicate the height, it will but an arbitrary height of a line, does not convey much information than the dimensions of a simple graphic. If one of these six representations were placed in a graph layout, then it may or may not be successful.

Christiane Paul Article:

I agree with Steve that the article feels dated, even though most of the projects referenced are only about 7 or 8 years old. Having all of our information online is interesting in the associations in which it is organized and categorized. One issue that was not discussed is ownership of data that populates all of these databases.