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Free Downloads & Useful Resources
Articles:
Articles by Sally Bigwood and Melissa Spore
Designing persuasive tables and charts
Four myths of data presentation
Free Guides by Sally Bigwood and Melissa Spore
Other relevant articles
These links should take you to interesting articles. Professor Ehrenberg's articles are well written and short.
A.S.C. Ehrenberg: "The Problem of Numeracy" A six page article that can change your life. Or anyway, change your approach to designing tables and graphs.
http://ccp.ucr.ac.cr/~icamacho/seminario_II_03/contenido/ehrenberg.pdf
A.S.C. Ehrenberg: "Graphs or Tables" pdf available. First published in The Statistician, 1978
http://www.stat.umn.edu/~sandy/courses/8801/handouts/04.tabular/ehrenberg1978.pdf
Howard Wainer: "How To Display Data Badly" Excellent, succinct article by a celebrity in data presentation. First published in The American Statistician in May 1984.
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Courses/grstat502/wainer.pdf
Jane E Miller: "How to Communicate Statistical Findings". An excellent article written for statisticians but helpful to anyone writing a report/giving a presentation with lots of figures.
http://policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/miller/Chance06.pdf
Bates College (USA) "Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Making Tables and Figures". General, practical article
http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTW_Guide_Table-Figures_9-30-08.pdf
Edward W Frees and Robert B Miller: "Designing Effective Graphs" – written for actuaries!
http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~hsm/bca-readings/FreesEMillerRDesigningeffectivegraphs.pdf
Books:
For those with an interest in data presentation:
Edward R. Tufte: 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information'. The Graphics Press (USA), Cheshire Connecticut, 1993. All of Tufte's books are as beautiful as they are excellent, but this is his best.
Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
Robin Williams: 'The Non-Designers' Design Book', Peachpit Press, 1994. Sensible advice on presenting general information in a book designed for the "visual novice".
Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
Schriver, Karen A. 'Dynamics in Document Design', John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1997. This large (592 pages) text book covers the wider issue of presenting text. Very thorough with much food for thought, even for non-typographers.
Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
BS7581:1992 Guide to the Presentation of Tables & Graphs published by the British Standards Institute.
This is a first rate, succinct (24 pages) and lucid document, setting out sound advice simply. However at £140 (US$ 214) per copy [December 2013] the cost is prohibitive. Available from:
http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000000285987
[Please feel free to complain about the extortionate price to the British Standards Institute.]
Stephen Few: Information Dashboard Design:A Primer in Data Reduction
The Effective Visual Communication of Data, 2003
Buy this book on Amazon.
Web Sites:
www.edwardtufte.com
Edward R. Tufte's site. Professor Tufte's work is explained and promoted here. Also, advice for readers.
www.perceptualedge.com
Perceptual Edge. Stephen Few is another American leader on data presentation.
