Edward Tufte: An Academic and Otherwise Life, An N=1

Edward Tufte gave a talk at Harvard recently with the above title. He basically gave a 1 hour summary of his life, how he got to where he is, and what he's up to these days. Unfortunately, it was mostly talking, and only used visuals towards the end of his talk, which was surprising considering he's the authority in the visual presentation of data. Still, it was an interesting and inspiring talk, as is the case when a far older and accomplished intellectual speaks his wisdom. He did talk about "sparklines", small high resolution graphic charts that are used embedded in text, which Tufte developed. He showed how Galileo had the right idea in using such graphic "letters" in his hand-written descriptions of the rings of Saturn (click on image for larger view):

A few days later, it was my birthday. As a present, Silvio gave me a graphing program! Not just any graphing program, but one he wrote to be able to graphically illustrate my connections to my friends. The program allows for different types of displays. Click on the image below for a better view of one version.



I have yet to enter even a small fraction of my friends. Click here for several versions of the chart in its early stages.