A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.
Mankind invented a system to cope with the fact that we are so intrinsically lousy at manipulating numbers. It's called the graph.
Design has a powerful impact on the viewer. It has authority, and data also has the same air of authenticity and detail. It can be hard to argue with a graph, and it's hard to argue with data. So to combine data with a strong visual impact creates a powerful message.
In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture.
A dead tree, cut into planks and read from one end to the other, is a kind of line graph, with dates down one side and height along the other, as if trees, like mathematicians, had found a way of turning time into form.
Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.
Personally, I'm not very keen on the visualization of absolutely everything.
Some people say the network is the computer. We believe the display is the computer. Anywhere there's a pixel, that's where we want to be.
The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph or in your statistics analysis - that moment you realise you know something no one else does and you get the pleasure of thinking about how to tell them.
I like that I can write my name in Persian, and it's a small unit, like a graphical unit. I feel the same way about my name in English, it's a graphical unit.
Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.
So this is the only TV show in America where I am quite confident that you, the audience, will share my excitement when I tell you that coming up in our next segment, we have the best graph ever. Best graph ever.
When I look at a pie chart, I just go numb.
Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.
