Reading Response – Ramsey

Tufte has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I have always felt that his ideas can be applied to most creative work, and I usually don’t read him strictly as a “data viz expert”.  In this case, by swapping out a few words, Tufte’s great advice for better quantitative data visualizations becomes great advice for almost any other communication.

For example, I try and stick to Tufte’s ideas when I write. By swapping “data” with “thesis” and “show” with “prove”  we get:

Above all else, prove the thesis.
Maximize the thesis-ink ratio.
Erase non-thesis-ink, within reason.
Erase redundant thesis-ink, within reason.
Revise and edit.
(By “thesis-ink” I mean any ink that works towards illustrating the thesis)

The field may be different, but the advice is the same: don’t clutter your work with anything that does not advance its purpose. Not only does his idea simply “fit” in other disciplines, but it remains good advice, and that is what is remarkable about Tufte.