Edward Tufte course reviews: 27 reviews of Tufte one-day class

August 9, 2016  |  Tufte course reviews
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In university halls and conference centers, Tufte’s appeal crackles. Fans spend the day looking at art and information through Tufte’s eyes, as he walks them through images and analysis of his books. In 4 books and popular auditorium gigs, he teaches by visual example. Next to a bad example of a graph, he positions a sublimely clear treatment, often using the same data. Tufte’s work is relevant to anyone who needs to write or present information clearly, from business executives to students. About 10 years ago, The New York Times crowned Tufte the “da Vinci of data.” A more fitting title might be the “Galileo of graphics.” Where da Vinci is remembered as an inventor of new technologies, Galileo put right our understanding of the solar system by positioning the sun at its center. Tufte, who owns a handful of nearly 400-year-old first editions by Galileo considers the early scientist a master of analytical design. BLOOMBERG

“The Best Single Day Class Ever.” Richard Bejtlich, TaoSecurity “I had the great fortune to attend Edward Tufte’s one day class Presenting Data and Information. This was the best one day class I have ever taken. It profoundly altered the way I think about presenting information and making arguments. If any part of your professional life involves delivering presentations, you must attend this class. It’s a complete bargain for the price. I would like to see every professional at my company take this course. Following Tufte’s advice would provide the single biggest productivity improvement and corresponding “return on investment” we are likely to see in my tenure . . .”

“One visionary day. Few speak as eloquently as Edward Tufte, whose theories of information design not only illuminate, they inspire. In a full-day seminar, Tufte, author of the classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, uses maps, graphs, charts, and tables to communicate what prose alone cannot. For information designers Tufte’s work is a model of clarity and craftsmanship. Given that the heart of his enterprise is statistics (of which he’s a professor at Yale), one might worry about “lognormal distributions” and “trimetric projections.” This would be a mistake. Tufte keeps jargon to a minimum. His insights lead to new levels of understanding both for creators and viewers of visual display. What makes Tufte most persuasive are his works themselves: His books and his seminar embody his belief that “good design is clear thinking made visible.” WIRED

ImageQuilts were first presented at Edward Tufte’s one-day course.
For good ideas search Google images, not words; see 1000
relevant images immediately, then quilt them for editing and analysis.
theverge.com on image quilts.

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“Edward Tufte’s one-day course on “Presenting Data and Information” is the best value-for-money that you can spend if you are involved in any way in presentation of information to users. When I receive this new schedule of these courses each year I get to thinking whom do I know whose career might change for the better if they take this course. I’ve taken it twice (the content is always up to date with the latest examples of both good and bad information design). Every attendee gets copies of Tufte’s four major works on visual display of information. Tufte offers a group discount so your company can send a whole department or product team. And there’s a steep discount for full-time students, faculty members, and postdocs.

When we were still not yet cash-flow-positive and had to watch every penny, I insisted on offering to every member of the staff who had either development or product marketing roles in the company, whether in London or Boston, a chance to go to this course. We aspired to be leaders in creating innovative ways for users to browse information from subject encyclopedias. To me it was money well spent and showed that we were a company that takes effective user-centered design seriously. If your boss says there’s no money to send you to such a course go to it on your own nickel, but buy a copy of “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” for your boss or boss’s boss.” JOHN DOVE

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Intelligent Designs: When information needs to be communicated, Edward Tufte demands both truth and beauty.

Fran Smith, Stanford Alumni Magazine

“In 1613, Galileo published Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari, his remarkable observations of the sun. On a fall day, 4 centuries later, Edward Tufte stands in front of a packed hotel ballroom, holding up a first edition of that book.

The room could be in New York, San Francisco, Cleveland or any of the dozens of other cities where Tufte, ’63, MS ’64, teaches his daylong course Presenting Data and Information. Today he’s at the New Haven Omni, to hear the man who has been called the Leonardo da Vinci of data, the Strunk and White of graphic design, the George Orwell of the digital age.

Tufte has demonstrated how confusing medical charts can lead to mistakes in treatment and how corporate reports that highlight years of rising revenue without adjusting for inflation can mislead investors. He has shown how a lawyer used a simple spreadsheet to defend mobster John Gotti and how 19th-century physician John Snow used detailed maps of London to pinpoint the cause of a cholera outbreak. Tufte is credited with turning chart-making into a discipline with intellectual credibility and moral weight. His course attracts not only visual professionals but also scientists, engineers, journalists, doctors, attorneys and financial analysts–pretty much anyone who analyzes and presents data.”

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Jeffrey, Twitter – June 2016. Nice post @taosecurity. Attended w/ my daughter. She said Edward Tufte’s course was more useful than her entire first semester of college.

Nicole, Twitter – 28 Jul 2016. So much insight and wisdom today @EdwardTufte. My favorite part: Bringing voice to this content.

Jared, Twitter – July 2016. If you’ve never been to an Edward Tufte workshop, you should go. It’s a right of passage for every designer.

Shari, Twitter – Jul 12, 2016. Attended Edward Tufte’s course many times. Absolutely SUPERB! (I love his old books. I brought my own gloves.)

Tufte in R

Edward Tufte course: Beautiful Evidence and Visual Explanations
– Brad Auerbach, Forbes magazine

“The essence of Tufte’s work is that there is a moral, ethical imperative for presenters and readers to insist on simple designs to maximize the rich and luscious data at hand. With his books and lectures, Tufte’s goal is to teach the skills that maximize reasoning time and decrease decoding time. Through a series of crisp examples he illustrates what works and what clearly does not. He has honed his craft with professorships (in political science, computer science and statistics) at Princeton and Yale, and his exhibitions at various art galleries.

Tufte in his course pointed out to a rapt audience of about 250 that the advances in technology enable an increase in spatial adjacency, which is another way of saying better computer screen resolution has us approaching the richness of paper.

From the bedrock of building better presentations, Tufte dove into big data and how best to handle it. “The rules of inference don’t change because N gets larger.In order to illustrate the principal of information integration, Tufte used Da Vinci’s studies of the human body, wherein the Italian genius’ words were right next to his beautiful drawings. Galileo’s writings on the discovery of Saturn’s rings perfectly integrated the written description with the visual depiction. Field guides for birders follow
that elegant style.Good maps also evoke an elegant style, where information is embedded in the illustration.”

“Ivy League Rock and Roll: Edward Tufte, the world’s most renowned visualization expert, holds legendary information design seminars up to 40 times a year. I recently was among the hundreds that flock to each of his live performances. What an experience! The auditorium has filled and the suspense and anticipation begins to grow. Tufte’s seminars are legendary. Anyone who deals with data and visualization on a professional level knows his books – and those who don’t are probably in the wrong business. Today in Washington’s Crystal Forum many participants come from government agencies and military institutions. There are also several students whose majors range from information technology and graphic design to economics, biology and medicine. Some, balancing notebooks on their laps, will take detailed notes so that they can fully absorb Tufte’s messages later at home. He gently takes an awe-striking original from Galileo Galilei or a centuries-old copy of Euclid and proceeds to carry it down the aisle. Later, one of his assistants will also walk through the auditorium with one of these precious books in hand.” Nicolas Bissantz

Bob, Twitter – July 2016. I met Edward Tufte, the Godfather of data analytics and visualization! Incredible course!

Omar, Twitter – 24 Jun 2016. A very inspiring day with the guru of data visualization.

Carl, Twitter – Jul 13, 2016. Once I had an analyst job, and our team attended an Edward Tufte seminar. It changed forever how I present data.

Jeffrey S., Twitter – 5 Jul 2016. ET coming to Minneapolis. I took his class several years ago and it remains my favorite (most useful) 1-day seminar.

Heiko, Twitter – 24 Jun 2016. Spending the day with #dataviz pioneer Edward Tufte in NYC learning about presenting information. Career highlight!

On-Leadership: Edward Tufte video interview: Government transparency, Analytical thinking, Recognizing excellence and a sense of the relevant.
– Washington Post

Edward Tufte has given his one-day course to over 328,000 students in more than 800 classes. Edward Tufte has given private internal one-day courses at Rockefeller University, Apple, Google, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermilab National Laboratory, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (3 times), Sun Microsystems, IBM, U.S. Joint Forces Command, U.S. Army HQ Hampton, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NASA Headquarters, NASA Houston, NASA Langley, NASA Stennis.

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