Graphics in Science

BishopBerkeley writes "Nature has an interesting nugget about the second meeting of the Image and Meaning Initiative which was held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It is about the use of graphics in presenting scientific data. I am also a big advocate of using nice graphics in scientific presentations, but I also agree with Felice Franel, the founder of I-M, that not all images are meaningful scientifically. In fact, one encounters (and I am ashamed to admit that I have published) images that look nice but have no scientific import at all. One very cool Harvard physics professor, Eric Heller, produces wickedly beautiful (and meaningful) images of quantum mechanical models. These images have made the covers of Science and Nature, and are featured in his online art gallery, which was reviewed in the New York Times in 2002." And of course, any mention of graphic information should not go by without a big shout out to Edward Tufte.

Comments

Graphics in Science

[Winckle]

Fianlly, an excuse to buy that 7800 GTX!

Please make the story clear.

[Black Parrot]

> not all images are meaningful scientifically. In fact, one encounters [...] images that look nice but have no scientific import at all

Could you show that with a diagram or something?

Re:Please make the story clear.

[arose]

Sure, here you go.

obligatory Soviet Russia

[Krankheit]

In Soviet Russia scientific data presents powerpoint.

Re:favourite toolkit?

[ghoti]

Excel

Re:Graphical information representation...

[tootlemonde]

Powerpoint was previously explored on Slashdot.

Of particular interest was this link to a Powerpoint presentation of the Gettyburg address.