Good Charts Are Like Good Jokes

by Jorge

(They don’t have to be explained.)

[Update: Sally Bigwood said it better here].

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Bill November 25, 2009 at 19:30: or

after years of hard thinking I have concluded that graphs are like jokes: if you have to explain them they have failed. — Sally Bigwood – found somewhere on http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index
Jorge Camoes November 25, 2009 at 20:06: Bill: Thanks. This is an obvious connection and I was surprised not getting any results when searching for “charts are like jokes”. I should have tried “graphs” also.
melissa Spore January 14, 2010 at 15:37: Hello!
Thanks for quoteing my c0-author, Sally Bigwood, from the Tufte site. You might be interested in our book Presenting Numbers, Tables & Charts (Bigwood & Spore: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-860722-9) and her business web site, Plain Figures .

Best, melissa
Jorge January 14, 2010 at 20:10: Hi Melissa. I actually have your book, it was one for the first books I bought when I started blogging, about three years ago (November 7, 2006 – thanks Amazon…).