Ed Tufte
Ed Tufte

The other week I finally made it to the Ed Tufte exhibit in Chelsea.  The gallery is a collection of his art and not about data, though as he tells it data is not important, but information is and that his art conveys information of all kinds.  Going on a Saturday means you’ll get a tour from the artist himself.  Getting to hear him describe his art and the way the eye and mind see it is really fascinating.

We had a chance to briefly chat about data (how could I resist) and he reinforced the notion that the medium, or the code or graphics, don’t matter.  He “would use sock puppets to get his point across” if that was necessary.  Something that al data visualists should keep in mind.

The day was even more exciting for me because he autographed my copy of Envisioning Information and I became mayor of the gallery on Foursquare.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.