A Sparkline Is a Word in a Line

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I first got the idea from Galileo, pretty quite gotten a lot of ideas, or when he discovered the rings of Saturn. I mean, maybe tell people what a sparkline is for those who haven't heard of it. And so that's the metaphor. Instead of a word, it's a graphic. It's words like size, just built right in. You know, you can barely see them themselves. But they're showing up and kind of seeking quietly. They're all about truth.

So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing and displaying information without putting too much thought into it, but Edward Tufte has done an enormous amount to change that. Beginning with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and continuing to his new book Seeing With Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth, Tufte’s works have shaped how we think about charts, graphs, and other forms of presenting data. We talk about information, design, and how thinking about data reflects how we think about the world.

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Edward Tufte received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has been a professor of public affairs at Princeton and of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale, where he is currently emeritus professor. He is the founder and owner of Graphics Press, and his books have sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide. He is an active artist and sculptor, as well as a touring lecturer.

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