Truthful Art, The: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication

The Truthful Art is an introduction to quantitative thinking and statistical and cartographical representation written specifically for journalists and designers. A follow-up to The Functional Art , it goes into the specifics of how to create functional charts, maps, and graphs.

Part 1 in The Truthful Art provides a broad introduction to statistics, written with journalists and designers in mind. Cairo avoids using jargon and formulas, focusing instead on how to manage and interpret data sets, and how to extract stories from them.

In Part 2, Cairo gets down to business giving specific advice on how to use charts and maps in infographics and visualization. Readers will learn what kind of statistical charts exist and how to use them correctly; what maps are with an introduction to cartography terms and techniques; the basics of maps including how to create locator maps and how to understand basic cartographical terms such as projection, scale, symbolization, etc.; and the main kinds of thematic maps (choropleth, isopleth, proportional symbol, etc.) and how to use them.

In Part 3, Cairo leaves the classroom and enters the real world with an in-depth look at how information graphics and visualization teams are organized at publications around the world including The New York Times, La Nación (Costa Rica), Estado de São Paulo (Brazil), and more. He also explains how to develop a successful style book for graphics using sample pages from several real style books for examples.

Part 4, the last section of the book, features interviews with six to 10 leading designers of charts and maps including Jer Thorp, Amanda Cox, Ben Fry, and more.

No matter what your actual job title, you areor soon will bea data worker.

Every day, at work, home, and school, we are bombarded with vast amounts of free data collected and shared by everyone and everything from our co-workers to our calorie counters. In this highly anticipated follow-up to The Functional Art Alberto Cairo's foundational guide to understanding information graphics and visualizationthe respected data visualization professor explains in clear terms how to work with data, discover the stories hidden within, and share those stories with the world in the form of charts, maps, and infographics. In The Truthful Art , Cairo transforms elementary principles of data and scientific reasoning into tools that you can use in daily life to interpret data sets and extract stories from them.

The Truthful Art explains:

The role infographics and data visualization play in our world

Basic principles of data and scientific reasoning that anyone can master

How to become a better critical thinker

Step-by-step processes that will help you evaluate any data visualization (including your own)

How to create and use effective charts, graphs, and data maps to explain data to any audience

The Truthful Art is also packed with inspirational and educational real-world examples of data visualizations from such leading publications as The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , Estado de São Paulo (Brazil), Berliner Morgenpost (Germany), and many more.

Auteur

Alberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami (UM), where he heads specializations in infographics and data visualization. He’s also director of the visualization program of UM’s Center for Computational Science, and Visualization Innovator-in-Residence at Univisión. Cairo is the author of the books Infografía 2.0: Visualización interactiva de información en prensa, published exclusively in Spain in 2008, and The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization (New Riders, 2012.) Over the past two decades, Cairo has been director of infographics and visualization at news organizations in Spain and Brazil, in addition to consulting with companies and educational institutions in more than 20 countries. You can find Cairo at www.thefunctionalart.com or on Twitter, where he is @albertocairo.

Contenu

Preface: It All Begins With a Spark

Introduction: The Island of Knowledge and the Shoreline of Wonder

PART I: FOUNDATIONS

Chapter 1: What We Talk About When We Talk About Visualization

Chapter 2: The Five Qualities of Great Visualizations

PART II: TRUTHFUL

Chapter 3: The Truth Continuum

Chapter 4: Of Conjectures and Uncertainty

PART III: FUNCTIONAL

Chapter 5: Basic Principles of Visualization

Chapter 6: Exploring Data With Simple Charts

Chapter 7: Visualizing Distributions

Chapter 8: Revealing change

Chapter 9: Seeing Relationships

Chapter 10: Mapping Data

Chapter 11: Confidence and Significance

PART IV: PRACTICE

Chapter 12: On Creativity and Innovation

An Epilogue on What Lies Ahead