I had the pleasure to attend the Intelligence Squared lecture by Edward Tufte at The RGS on Wednesday evening. I do like a spot of brain stretching. Brain stretching is good for you. Besides new inputs = new outputs for my plannerly meanderings. The theme was "Beautiful Evidence", which just happens to be the title of Tufte's latest book.

It was a breath of fresh air not to be surrounded by fellow ad folk. Maybe you were there, but I didn't spot you or find your tweets. There were certainly some designers and UX people. I found the lecture a mixed bag - it was certainly a lecture rather than a presentation. During the introduction and the conclusion Tufte seemed rather uncomfortable whilst reading from notes. But the core of the content, around analytical design, was delivered away from the lectern and that was when Tufte and the lecture came to life.

My take out from the evening was that information doesn't care what it is; but how it is brought to life is critical for its interpretation and power as a communicator. "Whatever it takes" was Tufte's recurring theme about how to visualise data, avoiding being a slave to a particular methodology.

A number of good quotes also emerged (no doubt paraphrased by me below)

"There are only two industries that call their customers 'users'. Illegal drugs and the computer industry".

"Content still matters and it's rather sad that we live in a world where that's an insight"

"Evidence is evidence whether it is words, numbers, diagrams or images (still or moving)".

"If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself"(quoting Eric Gill)

Much of the session was based around Charles Minard's visual representation (below) of the 1812 Napoleonic march to Moscow and the tragic demise of the French soldiers. This was used to describe Tufte's six fundamentals of analytical design.

1. Show Comparisons. In the diagram the beige line represents the advancing movement, the black the retreat. The thickness of the line represents the number of living soldiers. Thus comparing the thickness of the lines at the start and finish points provides a stark illustration of the loss of life. Only 1 in 42 returned. Note also the the sudden decrease in the thickness of the black line slightly left of centre. This is when many thousands fell through the ice on a river and drowned.

2. Show Causality. Show how things have happened, the dynamics at play etc. In the diagram the bottom chart shows the temperature during the retreat - "it was General Winter that beat Napoleon". I agree with the principle but question that this is a good example of it. Correlation doesn't necessitate causality.

3. Use Multivariate Data. (i.e. use more than 2 variables). In the diagram the longitude, latitude, direction, date, time and number of soldiers are represented.

4. Mode Indifference. Use whatever it takes to make the point. Integrate words and visuals, annotate etc. Always start with what the data says and then work out the best way to show it rather than starting with the methodology.

5. Credibility. Document everything. Include scale and sources. Why should your audience believe you? In the text at the top of the diagram, Minard includes his sources. Tufte warned against 'cherry picking' i.e. just using the evidence that supports your argument, rather than presenting the evidence. He also advised that incompetence was a greater barrier than conspiracy.

6. Quality, Relevance and Integrity of Content. The best way to improve your presentation is to improve the content.

It's worth noting that "Napoleon" is not mentioned in this graphic at all. It was created as an anti-war visual - but that message is left entirely to the data and the viewer's interpretation of it.

Tufte also demonstrated his sparklines concept which is a simple way of adding detailed contextual information to a data set. During this he remarked about John Tukey's observation that "The idea is to be approximately right rather than exactly wrong" which Tufte paraphrased as "Better to have the approximate answer to the right question than the right answer to the wrong question". This is a good lesson for Planners.

Here's some video highlights from Intelligence Squared.

More info, including links to the handouts, can be found here.