Data

When I mentioned Edward R. Tufte’s excellent The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in a recent blog post, it prompted me to search North Yorkshire’s online library catalogue to see if they had any more of the great man’s works. I was delighted to find that both Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations were available, yet languishing in a storage room somewhere rather than being on the shelves of one of the county’s libraries! So, I placed a request and they turned up at my local branch a few days later. ...

Fifty-three years since Darrell Huff published the seminal How to Lie with Statistics, and still we have newspapers as august as The Times pulling the oldest trick in the book: At first glance it all looks very impressive, but closer inspection of the comparison with sales of the Torygraph reveal a mere 8.7% sales lead, not more than double as suggested by the graphic.Not fooled. Another favourite book of mine that covers the still-relevant topic of graphical integrity is Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It’s one of those timeless works that I look forward to sharing with the next generation. ...

Via Eric G. Harrison – MS have developed a SQL Server Best Practices Analyser Tool. It’s like a cross between FxCop and Baseline Security Analyser, for SQL Server. Very useful. I just downloaded it, ran it against some of my databases, and it made some useful suggestions. This could quickly become indispensable.