Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

In an old thread that didn't go anywhere, I raised the issue of diagrams that apparently purport to show analyses of cause or influence in the biographies of geographers. I find these diagrams fascinating, and have even attempted to write plans for my future activities in a similar form.

I have posted a good example at <www.ocotillofield.net/geo.jpg>.

This diagram (and others like it) make the issue of causality more complex because the element of time implies but does not necessarily entail causality.

(Note, pertinent to another thread, that time is oldest=bottom, youngest=top!).

If nothing else, the density of information in these diagrams approaches the Minardian.

-- Mark Hineline (email), December 1, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

In my dissertation ("The Visual Culture of the Earth Sciences," 1993), I made this claim about the explanatory block diagrams of William Morris Davis, a leading geographer of the early 20th century: His diagrams were not pictures of his theories. The diagrams were his theories. I see no reason to disagree with myself ten years later.

But visual language is the strangest of language games, because it is considerably less rule-driven than verbal or numerical language games. Thus, diagrams with arrows "showing" causality can be taken as hypotheses, as statements of fact, or as theory. No standardized rule tells us how to read arrows. Compare this with (to take just one example) an equal sign in arithmetic or algebra. An equal sign is univocal. Arrows are multivocal.

Dr. Tufte's work is an important first step in devising more rigorous rules for the languague games that are diagrams, but there are many, many steps to go.

-- Mark Hineline (email), December 2, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

A double-headed arrow instead of two single-headed makes sense in certain circumstances: Every Arrow in Barr's diagram is based on a simplification, as are the nodes. Two horizontal single-headed arrows between two nodes would infer, that the two nodes influence each other, because the non-headed end of each arrow points to the cause of influence. In most cases we have no evidence for such a direct influence. We are able to see a corellation, but the cause for the corellation is still hidden. This is true not only for isms but also for single pieces of art, for e.g. drawings after a known object.

Another issue: should we use double-headed or non-headed arrows for such a relation.

-- Maximilian Schich (email), December 3, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

Dr. Tufte's points are well taken regarding the limitations of Alfred Barr's chart of Cubism and Abstract Art. Rather than address the myriad errors, misdirections and conceits on the Barr graph (forgive me), I offer these related musings.

Most of the criticisms in Dr. Tufte's commentary relate to ideas known in the '30s, so perhaps the chart wasn't meant to be an exhaustive diagram. Maybe it's intent was more akin to advertising. The Museum of Modern Art was still a fledgling institutions in 1936, its directors anxious of establishing the museum as the preeminent repository of not only modern art objects but of their meaning and history. As a commanding visual presentation in the mode of science, the chart conveys by its scientific look an exhaustive, even hermetic, and hence unchallengeable layout of the history of modern art; the course of modern art takes on the aura of inevitable technological advance (note that "Machine Esthetic" is very nearly in the center of the chart). By using the same image throughout the graphic media related to the exhibition, the chart became something of a logo whose meaning was clear: this is the only place you need come to for Modern Art.

The Barr chart ties into a few Ask E.T. threads.

Dr. Tufte provided a three star thread on rhetorical ploys in presentations. This chart is a good example of one not discussed there: donning the cloak (lab coat?) of unchallengeable authority.

The very look of the chart presages Richard Feynman's diagrams (see Dr. Tufte's thread), with objects/movements acting upon other objects/movements at various stages of time. They share a common visual language: key elements indicated by text descriptions (Barr enclosed supposed external influences in boxes), connections between elements and the course of influence indicated by lines (albeit arrowless in Feynman, and Barr without those nifty wavy lines), an indication of the direction of time. Hopefully I've not misunderstood this concept, but I believe I'm correct in remembering that quantum theory (and thus Feynman diagrams) allows for objects (virtual particles? anti-particles?) to move backward in time and Feynman's method may provide insight into a way of diagramming non-lineal or reciprocating causal events in art and other disciplines.

One of our fellow correspondents, Martin Ternouth, discussed the potential pitfalls of crafting visually sophisticated yet content thin presentations (I have to apologize for losing the thread).

There are a number of threads on Mark Lombardi's drawings of corporate and political intrigue:

analytical design / sculpture

Mark Lombardi and his drawings

Mapping Terrorism

There's also an article in the November 2003 Art in America. Certainly, Lombardi's drawings of the 1990s address similar design concerns in a more cartographic and thorough manner, yet I find it interesting that Lombardi has something of the same problem that Barr did: where to start and how to finish.

Charles and Ray Eames have come up in several contexts on Ask E.T. and they have a place here too. Here's a set of network diagrams Charles made (taken from "The Work of Charles and Ray Eames," Abrams 1997); both place the key figures at the center of the arrays. The first, a preparatory sketch for their 1969 "What Is Design" exhibition, is captioned "Diagram by Charles Eames showing the connection of the Eames Office to important clients, patrons and colleagues."

The second, ca. 1971, bears this caption: "Diagram by Charles Eames entitled 'Friends and Acquaintances' for the Bicentennial exhibition 'The World of Franklin and Jefferson'."

These obviously show only connections (as do the Barr and Lombardi diagrams), with scant emphasis given to strength of the connection or the waxing and waning of the relationships over time (the Eames Connections diagram does set up a planetary system of links that indicate some strenght of relationship). But these diagrams may provide a different way of looking at the course of modern art. The Barr chart makes bare the predilections and prejudices of its preparer: that advances in art are generated primarily by prior movements. This belies the active searching out of influences by artists. Perhaps a more interesting chart would go the other way: lines heading out from various artists to what they were looking at, including their own prior work, similar to the Eames diagrams. This could include a double-headed arrow or opposing arrows between Matisse and Picasso, for instance, or a circular arrow arcing from Picasso back to himself. David Smith, in whose work can be found a broad set of external influences, also wrote "My sculpture and especially my drawings relate to my past works, the 3 or 4 works in progress and to the visionary projection of what the next sculptures are to be." (1953, in "David Smith by David Smith," Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1968) Artists study no work with greater intensity than they do their own.

Barr, Feynman and Lombardi all use the same line weight, although Barr and Lombardi make use of both black and red in text and connecting lines. With Barr and Feynman, this may be as a result of limitations coming from the print shop; clearly it's an aesthetic decision with Lombardi. Perhaps differing line weights, differing colors or color densities could indicate the import of any influence or connection.

There may also be elements of influence that remain unavailable to diagrammatic description. Late in his life, Georges Braque commented on the height of the Cubist years, " ... Picasso and I said things to one another that will never be said again ... that no one will ever be able to understand ..." (1978, in "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, MOMA 1989) What must that have been like, and how do you diagram that?

-- Steve Sprague (email), December 3, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

The inherent evidential and presentional problem in linking a network of nouns by arrows or lines is that while the nouns are specific, narrow, complex, the arrows are non-specific, generic, ambiguous, and mean differently in nearly every use. That is, the level of analysis greatly differs for nouns compared to the links. The nouns are relatively crisp, detailed; the links soft, simple, dichotomous (either there is an arrow or there is not).

To understand the content here, the nature of the link is the key issue: what was the dynamic character of the relationship, say, among Picasso, Braque, and Matisse?

Lines and arrows are, in effect, verbs showing how one noun is related to another. Yet the verb is just a arrow, always an arrow. In the art chart, the arrows mean all sorts of things: caused, saw, taught, visited, saw in a gallery, was a friend of, was thought by Barr to be linked, traded paintings with, was imitated by, answered paintings by, and so on.

The Barr art chart is an important and powerful drawing. It does illustrate, however, the necessity of presenting some evidence about the character of the relationships somewhere else in the essay--because the arrows don't say much at all.

Exactly same issues arise from the absence of arrows between certain nouns as well.

One practical design consequence is that each arrow might be accompanied by one or two verbs describing the character of the relationship between the pair of nouns.

-- Edward Tufte, December 3, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

The Barr art chart is like a topographical map without a legend. It may contain a wealth of valuable information but without a point of refernce the symbols are meaningless.

-- David Montgomery (email), December 4, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

Would Barr's chart be improved by adding miniature archetypes of each school? While not a substitute for a walk through the gallery, the small multiples can show why Barr finds a link and what was adopted: color, line, shape, subject, space, etc.

Are all of Barr's arrow verbs positive? Surely some influences must be: rejected, mocked, loathed, escaped.

-- Dave Nash (email), December 4, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

Dave Nash's last comment is on the money. Barr's solid lines do imply a wholesale direct/positive/defining connection, if not stylistic influence, while the absence of a line (as Dr. Tufte points out) suggests none at all. But it ain't, as George and Ira told us, necessarily so.

That's one of the problems with connecting artists solely by style or movement. The (sometimes contradictory) thinking and practices of individual artists are what count and these change with time and prove nearly impossible to pigeonhole. In this light (and as Dr. Tufte suggests), the connecting lines on Barr's chart could use some annotation. One example with rejection in mind: the link from Cubism to Dadaism surely refers at least to Duchamp and Picabia, both of whom came under the sway of Cubism early in their careers and then rejected it. In fact, a part of Dada rhetoric (especially from Duchamp) came to include a renunciation of all art and artists involved with the merely "optical," including Cubism and the Cubists (Picasso, Braque, the whole lot).

Would you characterize that as a positive influence? Depends, I suppose, on how you define positive, and which side of the influence you're looking from. Jackson Pollock once said that his time in the studio of Thomas Hart Benton was important to him mainly as something to react against. (He later came to feel that he was better off having studied with such a strong, if oppositional, personality; an aesthetic character building experience, if you will.) However, Benton clearly had a profound impact on Pollock's art and you can see the abstract ghosts of Benton's looping figuration in Pollock's mature work. Was that a rejection or a fundamental influence? Or some sort of hybrid? And you certainly wouldn't want to ascribe that sort of relationship to any of the other New York School artists.

These complex subjects are debated at length in classrooms and studios, coffee shops and bars, and multitudinous books and articles are written about them. Maybe the connecting lines should be underwritten with source citations for further contemplation.

-- Steve Sprague (email), December 4, 2003

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, and some timelines

See the interesting (and understandable) discussion of Feynman diagrams at

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/26005#25711

Note the labels on the linking lines and the lack of node boxes and circles.

-- Edward Tufte, January 10, 2004

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, Feynman diagrams, and some timelines

I just recently discovered for myself the lack of quality evident in linking arrows. I enjoy a game played in online forums called Mafia, where players are the members of a small town trying to puzzle out who among them are secretly mafia members and vote to lynch them before the mafia can bump everyone else off.

As an exercise, I made a program to track the frequency and types of interactions between players, and I've got some screenshots online. It should be regarded as a prototype and a fairly rough pass. I thought there might be some kind of giveaway in interactions between the mafiosa, and that this would help me to puzzle it out. After I've done this for a few games, I concluded it useless for several reasons: it's too low-resolution for a significant amount of data, easily cluttered, gives no indication of timing (though I've considered making animations, just didn't bother), and doesn't tell anything about the quality (intensity, rationality, believability) of interaction between the players; this last is the key to winning.

-- Peter Harkins (email), April 20, 2004

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, Feynman diagrams, and some timelines

In the chemistry building of the University of Maryland I ran across a similar diagram, the Mallinckrodt Outline of the History of Chemistry, copyright 1961. Prepared by Herbert S. Klickstein, based on the 1927 outline by Norris W. Rakestraw. It was far more dense and detailed than this. I regret I haven't had need to go by the poster again with a camera, and I haven't found a digital rendition on-line. ExPASy has two wonderful diagrams of biological pathways. Home page is http://www.expasy.org/cgi-bin/search-biochem-index which has links to both, but just in case, here's the address for one of them: http://www.expasy.org/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl. Each cell links to a detail, and each name in the detail links to specific enzyme information. They are available in paper copy, although the enzyme data isn't in the wall-sized poster.

-- Niels Olson (email), July 9, 2004

Response to Analytical issues in causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, Feynman diagrams, and some timelines

Barr's chart is an intriguing challenge to redesign, especially with some of the arrow crossing over each other. I decided to developed a new version of the chart and then realized that there are so many ways of approaching this task. The colors that I assigned for each art movement are tinted and transparent. The colors were to help with differentiating the art movement. Yet I'm afraid that the tints add more confusion than clarity; sometimes color would add more noise than signal unless the color serves a purpose. Plus my version of the diagram is absent of arrows because the art movements were fluid in motion and influences—there's, to my mind, no absolutes to who influence who. Barr's chart relies on gravity by having the timeline start from the top down, like a waterfall of arrows touching each art movement as the eye follows each year. Intentional or unintentional I noticed that the overall design follows the Gutenberg Diagram. The theory is that we start to read (for western readers) by starting naturally from the top left and fall downward to the bottom of the page. So as in Barr's example, our eye would follow the arrows from art movement to art movement all the way to the bottom of the page with the title of 'CUBISM AND ABSTRACT ART'.

-- Dino D'Romero (email), January 6, 2005

There is a new book dealing chiefly with Barr's Chart(s):

Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt: Stammbaume der Kunst. Zur Genealogie der Avantgarde. Berlin, Akademie Verlag 2005 ca. 500 pages

see: http://www.akademie-verlag.de/

see also: http://db.medeocom.de/akademie/prod_anz.stm?PNr=004066

In english the same author has published the article: Shaping modernism. Alfred Barr's genealogy of art. in: Word & Image 16,4 (October-December 2000) p. 387-400

-- Maximilian Schich (email), October 4, 2005

How can quantity and causality best be integrated in a graphic? Even when the casuality is simple, it may be difficult to combine with the numbers. For example, the change in a bank balance over a number of time periods is caused by the difference between income and outgo during each period. It is easy enough to chart the three time series (e.g., the Social Security trust fund balance), but that falls short of a visual explanation, because it is left to the viewer to do the 'visual arithmetic', comparing the gap between the income and outgo to the rise in the total assets.

The challenge here is to depict the time histories of an inflow, an outflow, and a stock so that they are all intercomparable and such that the causality is immediately perceived. This arises in many other contexts, such as population (births-deaths), human resources (hiring-attrition), natural resoures (consumption-renewal), etc. A traditional approach just superposes the series, requiring the same visual arithmetic as the Social Security charts. I've made three attempts at improving this. The first highlights turnover: if the topic is, say, employee headcount, this version emphasizes the loss of experienced staff (those remaining from each previous period). But inflow and outflow rates are now spatially separated, and harder to compare to one another. The second attempt uses sloped whiskers to indicate what the total would have been at each point if there were only an inflow (top whiskers) or only an outflow (buttom whiskers). Now all time rates of change (inflow, outflow, net) are indicated by slopes, which is proper, and all three rates of change as well as the total can be intercompared. But this is farther from convention, and thus harder for a viewer to interpret without some explanation. It is also redundant, since the inflow in each interval is represented both by the vertical component of the upper whisker, and by the distance from the total down to the whisker-end below it. The final attempt with the redundancy removed is succinct, but how best to explain it to a viewer?

Or there may be a better approach altogether. Can anyone suggest a solution to this ubiquitous little problem?

Thanks to all for this delightful and educational forum.

-- Dan Goldner (email), November 13, 2005

Here's a government spending graphic that has some interest but is too much about uninformative linking lines and tiny photographs. It based on a small table of data. It looks like Lombardi meets the NASA Flight Readiness Review posted near the end of our thread PowerPoint Does Rocket Science

-- Edward Tufte, July 9, 2006

Timed production flow chart for automobiles from 1940.

Deep detail, dynamic perspective, labeled photographs (sometimes too literal as in "Planning") to relieve flatland. The Lyon Agency scale is my clumsy attempt to provide a measured photograph.

Credit: Reid, Kenneth, compiler. Industrial Buildings. (New York: F. W. Dodge Corp., 1940) Page 2, illustration dimensions are 7-1/2 inches wide x 5-5/8 inches tall.:

-- Anonymous (email), July 16, 2006

Really good! The link labels are superb. Thank you Kindly Contributor Anonymous.

-- Edward Tufte, July 16, 2006

What a good ruler... even if it isn't metric.

-- Tchad (email), July 17, 2006

In my line of work (designing games) I have to give referees a mind set and tool set for describing relationships between antagonist characters, their motivations, and the motivations of the characters played by other players.

I use causal diagrams, based somewhat off of Tufte, and a few books on writing romance novels(!).

There are three basic ties that matter for writing fiction, and for running roleplaying games: Ties of blood, ties of sexual tension, and ties of obligation. These all form bonds between characters that can be used to coerce them into acting.

So I give the following advice:

-- Ken Burnside (email), March 24, 2007

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/ligcon.html#c1

-- Ziska Childs (email), April 2, 2007

Here is a very nice causal diagram linking people who attended a wedding by one of (the most?) memorable story that linked them. The text provides concrete reasons why the people are linked and also a directionality inherent in the direction of the text. It shows a number of ET's design principles at work, one of which is passion for the content - this clearly took a lot of time (finding the definitive story that could be shared and hints at relationships, humour and life history) and shows a high regard for the guests at the wedding. Enjoy. Matt

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=461

-- Matt R (email), May 24, 2007

I was recently shown a Fishbone Diagram, which I am told was
invented in 1943 in Tokyo by Professor Kaoru Ishikawa.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishbone_diagram

It is interesting to see how much this invention resembles the
image from Industrial Buildings. (New York: F. W. Dodge Corp., 1940) above.

-- Tchad (email), May 24, 2007

This is about an hour Google tech talk on server-side security in which Neil Daswani has some very good work-a-day diagrams of the code that goes between web browsers, servers, and attackers, which he uses to very effectively illustrate how websites can be hijacked for the purpose of aiding and abetting in theft of private information and money. He explains the very common attack mechanisms of SQL injection and cross-site scripting, but the reason for the post here is really the diagrams. That he uses PowerPoint is unfortunate, but these diagrams, in and of themselves, were probably born on a chalkboard somewhere. They are remarkably similar to Feynman diagrams. Can any computer science folks tell us, are these standard forms or something novel?

-- Niels Olson (email), July 21, 2008

Yes, they are very common in Computer Science, you will typically see them in description of protocols, or any sequenced set of operations. You might see them coded up in tools for UML, as they are part of basic behavioral modeling, in this case they are called interactional diagrams or sequence diagrams, but they definitely pre-date UML.

-- Mark, July 21, 2008

Tim Showers has a very nice collection of visualizations for text data.

-- Niels Olson (email), August 21, 2008

Dear Niels Olson,

Thanks for pointing out the interesting collection. Here is a 'wordle' of this discussion thread (click for larger):

Words are sized according to the frequency of their usage and assembled in a compact fashion that invites careful inspection and many `happy accidents' like "Dr design" "draw linking links" and, my favorite, the "Tufte Feynman influence".

-- Sean Garrett-Roe (email), August 22, 2008

More related to wordles than causality, but still needs a place in this forum

The New York Times has an interesting visualization of what people were text messaging during the Super Bowl.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html

-- Niels Olson (email), February 3, 2009

Compare Barr's chart, which opens this thread, to this chart, illustrating the connections between NP-complete problems

• neato.png

-- Niels Olson (email), February 17, 2009

Response to Design of causal diagrams: Barr art chart, Lombardi diagrams, evolutionary trees, Feynman diagrams, timelines (from a cultural historian and graphic designer)

Nina Katchadourian is another artist who takes advantage of how "it is easy to draw a linking line or an arrow of implied causality." Her Genealogy of the Supermarket arranges advertising icons into a humorous but insightful family tree. By not attempting any "credible causal inferences," her clever chart asks more questions than it answers.

To help me make this argument, I quoted ET in an essay about this artwork, appearing in Gastronomica 8, no.4 (November 08): 7-9.

"By employing the irrefutable logic of a genealogy chart (double lines denote a marriage or partnership; single lines, biological offspring; and dotted lines, adopted offspring), Katchadourian adds an air of authority to her family tree and, thus, another layer of absurdity. Through the clarity of her display, Katchadourian reveals how advertising icons operate: they have been designed to appeal to our emotions, not our intellects. As the shrewd data design analyst Edward Tufte has written, successful displays of visual information are governed by principles of reasoning, by means of which 'clear and precise seeing become one with clear and precise thinking.' Herein lies the tension in Katchadourian's work. Advertising icons are not designed to withstand the rigors of clear and precise seeing or thinking...

"The seventy-eight icons in Katchadourian's family tree provide sufficient characters to form separate ethnic enclaves of Hispanic, Asian, African-American, Jewish, and Italian icons. There is even a half-human, half-vegetable section, in which the Jolly Green Giant has fathered the Corn Maiden, who represents Argo Corn Starch. Katchadourian's pairings make us smile, but they also raise important questions. Is the Native Indian icon found on Land O'Lakes butter the Corn Maiden's mother because Native peoples are more connected to the earth? Or because they were treated for a long time as less than human, making the half-vegetable reference more pointed? Whether the icon is viewed as related to a product, to a people, or to advertising history, Katchadourian's pairings encourage speculation, along with multiple interpretations and, at times, misinterpretations...

"...Even without a depiction of the earlier, kerchief-wearing "mammy" version of Aunt Jemima, Katchadourian's family tree investigates the use of ethnic stereotypes to sell products; when the icons are removed from the packaging and placed in this ahistorical chart, it becomes obvious how loaded they are as images. Is the marriage of the smiling Quaker of Quaker Oats fame to Aunt Jemima a reference to the business-trivia fact that his parent company purchased hers? Is it, perhaps, a commentary on marriage as ownership? Or on slave-holding whites? Or, as one histo-rian friend has suggested, perhaps the interracial union is a reference to the Quakers as early abolitionists?"

Images are from the artist's website: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com

-- Cory Bernat (email), March 14, 2009