Graphic Design

The work of Edward Tufte are the bibles for information designers and graphic artists. Tufte's emphasis is on the ways we see quantitative information. He draws on case studies as different as the mapping of cholera deaths in London in the 1700's, to the space shuttle Challenger's ill-fated launch in 1986. He is both an affectionate historian of information design as well as a ruthless critic of bad practices. His three books can be ordered directly from his publishing firm. These three leading books are:

Statistics and Innumeracy

Two books provide a layman's introduction to the misuses of statistics. Both are an easy read, short in page length, and would be useful to background your board or your leadership on the hazards of mining the meaning out of the mountains of numbers in your schools' annual reports.

John Allen Paulos is a journalist who has written about innumeracy — the lack of quantitative literacy — with wit and grace. His essays in the New York Times have now been collected into two wonderful and accessible books. These titles provide useful precautions for anyone writing or designing accountability reports for the public. The obstacles to understanding are the subject of Paulos's works. If you are more mindful of the hazards, you'll be more effective at minimizing the risk that your own efforts will be misunderstood.

Statistics: Supplementary Textbooks

Cartoonist Larry Gonick has written and illustrated a comic book textbook that will help anyone who already has a college level statistics textbook near at hand. Gonick's talents in storytelling help make understandable some of the core statistical concepts like analysis of variance that prove daunting. If you have colleagues or staff looking for ways to refresh their knowledge of statistical principles, Gonick's work may come in handy, indeed.