信息可视化大师Edward Tufte的《Envisioning Information》

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"Envisioning Information" 是一本由著名的信息设计和统计学教授 Edward R. Tufte 所著的经典著作，旨在探讨如何有效地可视化信息，从而帮助读者逃离“平坦世界”，提升信息的理解与分析能力。在书中，Tufte 提出了多个关键概念和原则： 1. **逃离平坦世界 (Escaping Flatland)**：这个概念指的是从二维平面上展示复杂数据的挑战，通过立体或多层次的方式，使数据更易于理解。Tufte 强调利用空间维度来增强信息的深度和维度。 2. **微/宏观视角 (Micro/Macro)**：Tufte 强调在信息可视化中同时展示细节（微观）和整体（宏观）的重要性。这样可以帮助观众在不同的尺度上理解和比较信息。 3. **分层与分离 (Layering and Separation)**：有效的信息设计需要将元素合理地分层，确保关键信息突出，同时保持视觉清晰。这包括使用颜色、线条、空间等手段来区分不同的数据层次。 4. **小多件 (Small Multiples)**：这是一种将同一图表或设计重复使用，但数据不同，以便于对比的方法。这种方法能直观地显示变化和趋势，无需复杂的解释。 5. **色彩与信息 (Color and Information)**：Tufte 讨论了如何使用颜色来增强信息的传达，强调选择合适的颜色方案可以显著提高数据的可读性和洞察力。 6. **空间与时间的故事叙述 (Narratives of Space and Time)**：书中探讨了如何通过可视化来讲述关于时间和空间的故事，让数据具备叙事性，从而更好地吸引和引导观众。 Tufte 的工作不仅限于这本书，他还是一位在统计学、信息设计和政治经济学等领域有广泛影响力的学者。他的其他著作，如《Visual Explanations》、《The Visual Display of Quantitative Information》等，同样在这些领域产生了深远影响。此外，他还获得了美国统计协会、美国艺术与科学院、古根海姆基金会和行为科学高级研究中心等多个机构的荣誉，并因其在软件文档方面的贡献而获得了 ACM 的 Joseph Rigo 奖。《Envisioning Information》本身也因其内容和设计获得了14项奖项，包括 Phi Beta Kappa 科学奖和“最佳图形设计”奖，证明了Tufte在信息可视化领域的权威地位。这本书是任何对数据可视化和信息设计感兴趣的人不可或缺的参考资料。

Particularly intriguing are stereo illustrations, which deliver vivid

three-dimensional scenes by means of paired images (one for each eye),

which are then fused mentally by viewers. Aerial landscapes, molecular

structures, and other worldly objects are commonly portrayed; repre-

sentations of more abstract and ragged quantitative data are rarely seen.

Many viewers must struggle (and some fail) to fuse the images; even

experienced eyes may require several minutes of vacant staring before

obtaining the splendid stereo view.

Recent work on computer visual-

izations, stereo images, holograms, and so on hint at an increasing depth

and pace to analytic displays, perhaps eventually without all the para-

phernalia accompanying current methods.

Color stereopair of Bonaduz, Canton

of Grisons, Switzerland, October, 1975,

photographs taken with Wild Leitz aerial

camera RCIO. Scale about 1:11,000.

Stereoscopic viewers will assist in obtain-

ing three-dimensional images. The effects

can be seen without optical devices by some,

however. The views here are arranged for

the wide-eyed or pie-eyed method of viewing

stereograms; those using the popular cross-

eyed method will see sunken mountains and

raised rivers. See Thomas Avery and Graydon

Berlin, Interpretation of Aerial Photographs

(Minneapolis, 4th edition, 1985), pp. 25-90.

Promising results are D. B. Carr, W. L.

Nicholson, R. J. Littlefield, and D. L. Hall,

"Interactive Color Display Methods for

Multivariate Data," and K. R. Gabriel and

C. L. Odoroff, "Illustrations of Model Diag-

nosis by Means of Three-Dimensional Bi-

plots," in Edward J. Wegman and Douglas

J. DePriest, Statistical Image Processing and

Graphics (New York, 1986), 215-250, 258-

274; Thomas V. Papathomas, James A.

Schiavone, and Bela Julesz, "Stereo Ani-

mation for Very Large Data Bases," Com-

puter Graphics and Applications (September,

1987), 18-27; and William S. Cleveland and

Marylyn E. McGill, eds., Dynamic Graphics

for Statistics (Belmont, California, 1988).

ESCAPING FLATLAND 17

SUNSPOTS were examined in detail by telescope in the early 16oos,

after some 200 years of repeated viewing by unaided eyes in Athens,

China, Japan, and Russia. It was difficult for Europeans to see sunspots

at all because Aristotle had said that celestial bodies were perfect and

without blemish, a fancy which became official church doctrine in the

middle ages.

Then, in 1610-1612, Galileo and others made detailed

telescopic observations of sunspots.

Galileo marked spots directly onto paper flatland, maintaining the

proper image plane while drawing a large diagram of a spotted sun:

The method is this: Direct the telescope upon the sun as if you were going to

observe that body. Having focused and steadied it, expose a flat white sheet of

paper about a foot from the concave lens; upon this will fall a circular image

of the sun's disk, with all spots that are on it arranged with exactly the same

symmetry as in the sun. The more the paper is moved away from the tube, the

larger this image will become, and the better the spots will be depicted. Thus

they will all be seen without damage to the eye, even the smallest of them—

which, when observed through the telescope, can scarcely be perceived, and

only with fatigue and injury to the eyes.

In order to picture them accurately, I first describe on the paper a circle of the size

that best suits me, and then by moving the paper towards or away from the tube

I find the exact place where the image of the sun is enlarged to the measure of the

circle I have drawn. This also serves me as a norm and rule for getting the plane of

the paper right, so that it will not be tilted to the luminous cone of sunlight that

emerges from the telescope. For if the paper is oblique, the section will be oval and

not circular, and therefore will not perfectly fit the circumference drawn on the

paper. By tilting the paper the proper position is easily found, and then with a pen

one may mark out spots in their right sizes, shapes, and positions. But one must

work dextrously, following the movement of the sun and frequently moving the

telescope, which must be kept directly on the sun.

George Sarton, "Early Observations of the

Sunspots," Isis, 37 (May 1947), 69-71; for the

full history, D. Justin Schove, ed., Sunspot

Cycles (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 1983).

Galileo Galilei, History and Demonstrations

Concerning Sunspots and Their Phenomena

(Rome, 1613), translated by Stillman Drake,

Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Garden

City, New York, 1957), pp. 115-116.

18 ENVISIONING INFORMATION

As more observations were collected daily, small multiple diagrams

recorded the data indexed on time (a design simultaneously enhancing

dimensionality and information density0, with the labeled sunspots

parading along alphabetically. This profoundly multivariate analysis —

showing sunspot location in two-space, time, labels, and shifting relative

orientation of the sun in our sky — reflects data complexities that arise

because a rotating sun is observed from a rotating and orbiting earth:

For some astronomers, particularly those seeking to reconcile data

with doctrine, it was unclear just where sunspots were located. Surely

not on the surface of that perfect sphere; perhaps satellites orbited the

sun, or even planets were in transit across the sun's face — speculations

soon demolished by Galileo. Through an elegant chain of visual reason-

ing and with characteristic sardonic bluntness, Galileo, writing from

Florence in August 1612, converts empirical observation into focused

evidence supporting conclusions. His argument unfolds the raw data

("what the eye of the forehead" registers) into a luminous explanation

of mechanism ("what the eye of the mind" envisions),

a deeply visual

logic that produced precise insights far beyond those achieved by others

who had

also

observed sunspots

in the

early

1600s.

Indeed,

"it was

than 150 years before any important addition was made"

to Galileo's

results, as reported in 1613:

I therefore repeat and more positively confirm to Your Excellency that the dark

spots seen in the solar disk by means of the telescope are not at all distant from its

surface, but are either contiguous to it or separated by an interval so small as to be

quite imperceptible. Nor are they stars or other permanent bodies, but some are

Illustrations from Christopher Scheiner

(writing under the pseudonym "Apelles"),

De Maculis Solaribus (Rome, 1613), pp. 14-

15; and his Rosa Ursina sive Sol (Bracciani,

1626-1630), p. 63. On the dispute between

Galileo and Scheiner concerning sunspots,

see William Shea, Galileo's Intellectual

Revolution (New York, 1972), pp. 48-74.

The persistent relationship between

artistic capacity for visualization and ex-

traordinary scientific achievement is de-

scribed in Robert Scott Root-Bernstein,

"Visual Thinking: The Art of Imagining

Reality," Transactions of the American Philo-

sophical Society, 75 (1985), 50-67. For further

evidence about Galileo, see Erwin Panofsky,

Galileo as a Critic of the Arts (The Hague,

1954), p. 5: An excellent draughtsman,

Galileo loved and understood 'with perfect

taste' all the 'arts subordinated to design' . . .

he was originally inclined to study painting

rather than mathematics, and one of his

most intimate and faithful friends was the

outstanding painter of their native Florence,

Ludovico Cigoli."

R. J. Bray and R. E. Loughhead, Sunspots

(London, 1964), p. 2. Galileo's analysis at-

tained special longevity because of its in-

sight and also the nearly complete absence

of observable sunspots from 1645 until 1715!

John A. Eddy, "The Maunder Minimum,"

Science, 192 (June 18, 1976), 1189-1202.

ESCAPING FLATLAND 19

always being produced and others dissolved. They vary in duration from one or

two days to thirty or forty. For the most part they are of most irregular shape, and

their shapes continually change, some quickly and violently, others more slowly

and moderately.

They also vary in darkness, appearing sometimes to condense and sometimes to

spread out and rarefy. In addition to changing shape, some of them divide into

three or four, and often several unite into one; this happens less at the edge of the

sun's disk than in its central parts. Besides all these disordered movements they

have in common a general uniform motion across the face of the sun in parallel

lines. From special characteristics of this motion one may learn that the sun is

absolutely spherical, that it rotates from west to east around its own center, carries

the spots along with it in parallel circles, and completes an entire revolution in

about one lunar month. Also worth noting is the fact that the spots always fall

in one zone of the solar body, lying between the two circles which bound the

declinations of the planets - that is, they fall within 28° or 29° of the sun's equator.

The different densities and degrees of darkness of the spots, their changes of shape,

and their collecting and separating are evident directly to our sight, without any

need of reasoning, as a glance at the diagrams which I am enclosing will show. But

that the spots are contiguous to the sun and are carried around by its rotation can

only be deduced and concluded by reasoning from certain particular events which

our observations yield.

First, to see twenty or thirty spots at a time move with one common movement is

a strong reason for believing that each does not go wandering about by itself, in the

manner of the planets going around the sun. . . . To begin with, the spots at their

first appearance and final disappearance near the edges of the sun generally seem to

have very little breadth, but to have the same length that they show in the central

parts of the sun's disk. Those who understand what is meant by foreshortening on

a spherical surface will see this to be a manifest argument that the sun is a globe,

that the spots are close to its surface, and that as they are carried on that surface

toward the center they will always grow in breadth while preserving the same

length. . . . this maximum thinning, it is clear, takes place at the point of greatest

foreshortening....

I have since been much impressed by the courtesy of nature, which thousands of

years ago arranged a means by which we might come to notice these spots, and

through them to discover things of greater consequence. For without any instru-

ments, from any little hole through which sunlight passes, there emerges an image

of the sun with its spots, and at a distance this becomes stamped upon any surface

opposite the hole. It is true that these spots are not nearly as sharp as those seen

through the telescope, but the majority of them may nevertheless be seen. If in

church some day Your Excellency sees the light of the sun falling upon the pave-

ment at a distance from some broken window pane, you may catch this light upon

a flat white sheet of paper, and there you will perceive the spots. I might add that

nature has been so kind that for our instruction she has sometimes marked the sun

with a spot so large and dark as to be seen merely by the naked eye, though the

false and inveterate idea that the heavenly bodies are devoid of all mutation or al-

teration has made people believe that such a spot was the planet Mercury coming

between us and the sun, to the disgrace of past astronomers.

Galileo Galilei, History and Demonstrations

Concerning Sunspots and Their Phenomena

(Rome, 1613), translated by Stillman Drake,

Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Garden

City, New York, 1957), pp. 106-107, 116-

117. Galileo had been through all this once

before when he first saw craters on the

moon, another supposedly perfect celestial

sphere. One of Galileo's opponents, "who

admitted the surface of the moon looked

rugged, maintained that it was actually

quite smooth and spherical as Aristotle had

said, reconciling the two ideas by saying

that the moon was covered with a smooth

transparent material through which moun-

tains and craters inside it could be discerned.

Galileo, sarcastically applauding the ingenu-

ity of this contribution, offered to accept it

gladly — provided that his opponent would

do him the equal courtesy of allowing him

then to assert that the moon was even more

rugged than he had thought before, its sur-

face being covered with mountains and

craters of this invisible substance ten times

as high as any he had seen. At Pisa the

leading philosopher had refused even to look

through the telescope; when he died a few

months afterward, Galileo expressed the

hope that since he had neglected to look at

the new celestial objects while on earth, he

would now see them on his way to hea-

ven." Stillman Drake, "Introduction: Sec-

ond Part," Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo

(Garden City, New York, 1957), p. 73.

20 ENVISIONING INFORMATION

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