Rating  - Good Criticism, Few Alternatives
Tufte's criticism of PowerPoint is excellent. He points out its worst failings: low information density, forcing all thought into "bullets", etc. However, he does not provide suggestions for alternative ways to present quantitative information beyond "use other graphical forms".
Also, potential buyers should note that this essay is included as a chapter in _Beautiful Evidence_.
Rating - Excellent overview of PowerPoint Tool
This document is an excellent review without prejudices of a very common Office tool: PowerPoint. It is the proof that common tools are not necessarily good tools or professional tools.
Only to mention that this sepparate chapter can be found included in the book "Beautiful Evidence", also by E. Tufte.
Rating  - Worth a Read...Especially if You Use PowerPoint
"The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" is really an essay as opposed to a book. Written by Edward Tufte, this is well worth reading if you use Microsoft PowerPoint at work, in school or at home. It is enlightening in terms of how the medium - PowerPoint in this case - can affect the message.
So as to contextualize this publication, the author, Edward Tufte, is one of the world's leading authorities on presenting information graphically. A prolific writer, Tufte has been deemed the "Galileo of Graphics...the Leonardo da Vinci of Data...and the world's leading analyst of graphic information" by various well-known sources. Put another way, Tufte knows of what he speaks.
The focus of this essay is on how PowerPoint (and other like presentation tools, in my opinion) reduces certain qualities of information and on how presenters can improve presentations in general.
In addition to being an informative read, the mock "Gettysburg Address" using PowerPoint is hysterical and makes a clear point through humor.
Highly recommended.
Rating  - Tufte Should Stick to What He Knows
I was first introduced to Tufte in Beautiful Evidence, which I stumbled upon in a B&N in Seattle on a business trip. I'm a software architect and developer; hence, I'm very familiar with the software world, particularly Microsoft technologies, which is where most of my development experience lies.
(I should say that I read this as part of the Beautiful Evidence book, which was good, but this part irritated me, so I'm glad it's separate here so I can review it separately.)
Certainly, Tufte has some good points about showing how PowerPoint can be limiting, and certainly PowerPoint has been abused. But that's no grounds to indict it as a useful tool, and in particular, 2007 gets a lot better in terms of empowering presenters to have more effective and visually interesting slides.
The point of PPT slides is simply to supplement a presentation by providing visual reinforcement of what is being said audibly. They shouldn't be used as a substitute for other means of communicating, which would include the possibility of a handout (interestingly enough, you can print out slides w/ space for notes to use as a handout, so it isn't an either-or option) or using some other software or even your hands to draw up and scan in visualizations that can't be done with PPT.
I think what bothered me more than anything was the ignorant indictment of the software industry as a whole. Tufte goes way out on a limb trying to extrapolate how we software creators must think based on the capabilities of PPT. There are plenty of other tools that provide other ways of visualizing information, and every year (or more often) we see advancements in tooling to help folks more effectively express data and ideas in digital format.
His rambling about the "hierarchical" structure of the corporate software world driving the development of software is simply ludicrous. More than any other industry, I'd say that software dev tends to be more open and more fluid in terms of both organization and methodology. We're a bunch of brainiacs, inventors, and artisans, and it comes naturally for us to try out new ideas and ways of doing even the most mundane of things.
So to sum up, as long as Tufte stays within his realm of expertise (which seems to be visualization of information/graphic design), he has a lot of quality ideas to offer. However, when he strays from that as he's done with his essay on PowerPoint, the value of his thoughts diminish exponentially. Stick with reading his other books that are in his area of expertise.
Rating - Tufte rails against PowerPoint (templates that is)
This pdf is now part of the book Beautiful Evidence. Tufte goes after the bullet text methodology and templates that starve the audience for information. There is a lot that you may do with PowerPoint that can be effective forms of communication. Tufte shows what to avoid.
Go to the Product Information page
page 2 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Customer Reviews for Graphics Press,0961392169,9780961392161,0961392169,005.58 |
