Edward Tufte

Statistician; Professor Emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science, Yale University

Edward Tufte discussed his theories of visual thinking and analytical design in a lecture for Intelligence Squared in London on Wednesday 19th May. The event will be available on-demand shortly for IQ² premium members or those who purchase on online event pass for £2.99.

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Edward Tufte has been described by the New York Times as the “da Vinci of data” and by Business Week as the “Galileo of graphics.” He has written, designed, and self-published four books on visual thinking and analytical design: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983, 2001), Envisioning Information (1990), Visual Explanations (1997), and Beautiful Evidence (2006). These books have received 40 awards for content and design and have 1.8 million copies in print. It was announced in March 2010 that Barack Obama was to appoint Tufte to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, in order to explain how the money from the President's economic stimulus package is to be spent.

Tufte was raised in California and studied statistics at Stanford University and political science at Yale, and began teaching courses in political economy and data analysis at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School in the late 1960s. It was during this time that he began to formulate the ideas that eventually led to The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. He has since had solo shows of sculptures and prints exhibited at Artists Space in New York and the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, and in 2009-2010 staged a major sculpture show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Since 1999, he has completed 50 large-scale outdoor pieces, 150 table pieces, and many steel engravings and digital prints.