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161
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #204,391 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Full of examples on how NOT to present information.
This book's charts are very pretty to look at, but the quantative approach in many of them was so bad and so confusing that for the first 50 pages I thought I was reading a spoof. On page 10, an area representing $21B is larger than one representing $27B, and $60B looks to be about half of $230B. On pages 60 - 65 the charts have no labels whatsoever, and so there's literally no way to tell what they're trying to say: it's just six pages of colorful polygons. You'll find these kinds of blunders on almost every page; I've just chosen a few early examples. I know it seems like I'm nit-picking, but for a book claiming in its subtitle to be some kind of statistical "guide," such flaws are fatal. If you're at all interested in examples of beautifully presented and accurate information, please read Beautiful Evidence or The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition instead.
November 2009 · Books
the product in question
The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia
4.1★ · 250 ratings, as of 2023
worser bester