The Visual Display of Quantitative InformationBook
by Edward Tufte
Who uses, recommends or left The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
Interface designer and researcher known for Inventing on Principle and Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction; founder of Dynamicland.
loved
The bibles of information design.
His 'Highly recommended things!' page — a five-star list he introduces as 'my favorite things in all the world', one line of his own commentary per item. The page carries no date; the earliest Internet Archive capture is 2011-05-25 and the page's own markup references an earlier /Links2007/ version.
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.