The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufteby Edward Tufte
Ranked 7 of 12 design books by recommenders
Recommended as a classic guide to presenting quantitative data, full of good examples. Critics say it mostly shows examples the author likes and makes claims without justification.
Recommended as a classic guide to presenting quantitative data, full of good examples. Critics say it mostly shows examples the author likes and makes claims without justification.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Canonical classic on data presentation
“the canonical popular book - Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - is from 1982”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Information Is Beautiful” “my biggest inspiration was Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Better Graphs – Teach agents to stop making plain Matplotlib slop” “excellent books on the "philosophy" of data presentation”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip” - Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [pdf]”
Other design books people recommend
The four most recommended other design books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Design of Everyday Thingsby Don Norman | 29 | 2 | 94% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Refactoring UIby Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger | 14 | 3 | 82% | 3 | — | — |
| Don't Make Me Thinkby Steve Krug | 12 | 1 | 92% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Practical Typographyby Matthew Butterick | 10 | 3 | 77% | 8 | — | Approved |
| The Visual Display of Quantitative Informationby Edward TufteThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Like Tufte's Visual Display... book, it's a great article because it has loads of good examples”
“I've always hated the data-ink ratio metric. It's totally invalid.”
“Tufte doesn't really move far beyond exploring examples he likes”
“it had no real justification for its claims”
“excellent books on the "philosophy" of data presentation”
“my biggest inspiration was Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”
“the canonical popular book - Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - is from 1982”
“Reading that book is better than nothing, but it’s gives laypeople about as much understanding of design”
“I have all of Tufte’s books. They’re great.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.