Display architecture recapitulates quantitative thinking; design quality grows from intellectual quality. Such dual principles – both for reasoning about statistical evidence and for the design of statistical graphics – include:
- documenting the sources and characteristics of the data
- insistently enforcing appropriate comparisons
- demonstrating mechanisms of cause and effect
- expressing those mechanisms quantitatively
- recognizing the inherently multivariate nature of analytic problems
- inspecting and evaluating alternative explanations
When consistent with the substance and in harmony with the content, information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, skeptical.
~ Edward Tufte, Visual and Statistical Thinking
