Welcome for the eighth time. I am just absolutely thrilled this month to have Stephen Few as our guest writer. Stephen is simply the most influential thinker in the world on data visualization. If you think you know how to make graphs, and never read his books, well you don’t! I had the amazing experience of attending his first public class in the summer of 2007. Those three days changed my professional life. Rarely have I been exposed to such mind blowing content.
His books have been recognized as seminal works in the field of analytics. Reducing his work to graph design misses the actual analytical aspect of his contribution. Few has demonstrated how visualization, exploiting the various strength of the human eye, can be a pillar of analysis, such as pattern recognition, correlation, etc.
For this issue, Stephen offers one of his earlier texts on dashboarding. Those not familiar with his work will find it a great first exposure, and those who do will be reminded of what a precursor he has been.
As for me, I present some thoughts about the political context of measurement, and the importance of recognizing it as analysts.
Finally, if you think this newsletter is slowly shaping itself as something very valuable, please let your colleagues know.