''The Visual Display of Quantitative Information'' by EdwardTufte, Graphics Press, 1983 

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/096139210X.01._PE_PI_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[ISBN 0-9613921-0-X] A wonderfully illustrated book about charts, graphs, and other ways to display quantitative information. After reading this book you will find yourself going back to your own documents and programs to revise and improve them.

Part of my PatternPerson BookList.

-- ToddCoram
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Now I remember where I got the hint. Ordered EdwardTufte's next book EnvisioningInformation, had to wait a very long time for it, and loved it. Not only an interesting, but before all a beautiful book. This seems like a good place to share reviews. See StayingCurrent. -- MartineDevos 
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The best piece of advice I got from this book was to take a graph, then erase everything you can without removing any of the underlying information. Tufte illustrates this exercise with a very clever looking graph (the kind you might get out of Excel) that turns into a simple and elegant graph. The best part of it was that the original graph had a grid printed under the data. Erasing the horizontal lines in the grid left little spaces in the vertical grid lines that reminded you of the values of the y axis, but very subtly and without intruding on the information. -- KentBeck
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One of the more beautiful books you'll ever hold in your hands; Tufte took out a second mortgage on his house in order to self-publish the book according to his own standards for production. Now that's dedication! -- BetsyHanesPerry
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I hate 3D pie charts. By definition and design, they distort the data. The whole point of doing a pie chart is to make the relative sizes easy to see. The primary result of tilting the chart and making it "thick" is to distort the data. -- JeffGrigg

''Pie charts are still bad because most people don't perceive the X and Y axes as equal. A small slice in one direction is often judged to be a different size from an identical slice in another.''
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