Ask E.T.: Lists: theory and practice

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Lists: theory and practice

Evelyn Waugh famously built long descriptive lists into
sentences by separating list elements with semi-colons.
From Waugh's Scoop (1937), my favorite novel:

And from Waugh's A Handful of Dust (1934):

My essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within
has a section on lists that opens with a brief general discussion of lists and
then suggests that the hierarchical bullet lists of PowerPoint too often
replace the sentence with the grunt :

-- Edward Tufte, August 28, 2006

Here's a summary of the classic Harvard Business Review article by Gordon Shaw, Robert Brown, and Philip Bromiley, available from HBR here.

Strategic Stories: How 3M Is Rewriting Business Planning, May 1998 Issue

Abstract: This article argues that a good strategic plan must be written in a narrative form that tells an exciting, detailed, nuanced story. Virtually all business plans are written as a list of bullet points. Despite the skill or knowledge of their authors, these plans usually aren't anything more than lists of "good things to do." Rarely do these lists reflect deep thought or inspire commitment. Worse, they don't specify critical relationships between the points, and they can't demonstrate how the goals will be achieved. 3M executive Gordon Shaw began looking for a more coherent and compelling way to present business plans. He found it in the form of strategic stories. Telling stories was already a habit of mind at 3M. Stories about the advent of Post-it Notes and the invention of masking tape help define 3M's identity. They're part of the way people at 3M explain themselves to their customers and to one another. Shaw and his coauthors examine how business plans can be transformed into strategic narratives. By painting a picture of the market, the competition, and the strategy needed to beat the competition, these narratives can fill in the spaces around the bullet points for those who will approve and those who will implement the strategy. When people can locate themselves in the story, their sense of commitment and involvement is enhanced. By conveying a powerful impression of the process of winning, narrative plans can mobilize an entire organization.

-- Edward Tufte, August 28, 2006

On excessively hierarchical organization of material, see Martin Hardee Tufte story: AnswerBook for an account of the problem.

I am grateful to Martin Hardee, who generously recalled this story despite my abruptness in looking over AnswerBook.

Excessively hierarchical organization of information is sometimes explained by Conway's Law: "Any organization which designs a system . . . will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." So user guides represent Conway's Law squared, a system for understanding a system; a PP user's guide, the Law cubed.

-- Edward Tufte, August 28, 2006

Related, but not exactly: Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style has a few sections on list typography.

-- Rob Simmon (email), August 29, 2006

Below is an edited version of David Lodge on lists, from his book The Art of Fiction, essays originally published in The Independent. Lodge's essay opens with a list paragraph from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night :

Lodge's book is most helpful in thinking about strategies for constructing narratives, fiction or non-fiction.

-- Edward Tufte, September 11, 2006

"Representative bacterial pathogens whose genomic sequence is entirely or largely known."

From Mims, et al. Medical Microbiology, 3rd Ed. Elsevier Mosby; 2004.

-- Niels Olson (email), September 12, 2006

With regard to the list of bacterial pathogens with known genomic sequences:

In general, lists should be ordered substantively not alphabetically. The conventional alphabetical ordering is appropriate for look-up lists such as telephone books. List-makers should look for some kind of substantive ordering before defaulting to alphabetical order. Perhaps a substantive expert could suggest an ordering of the pathogen list. Substantive ordering of lists requires thought, unlike automatic pilot alphabetical orderings.

The pathogen list might also be better simply as a single column of the 57 names. And then that list might be tightened up by listing the secondary names within clusters of primary names. For example:
.

Moraxella: catarrhalis
Mycobacterium: avium, bovis, leprae, tuberculosis
Mycolplasma: genitalium, pneumoniae
.

and so on, as we now have 7 items in 3 stacked lines. In restructuring the entire list into these local clusters, 22 fewer lines are needed for the stacked-cluster format, thereby yielding a single column list of 35 lines. This stacked-cluster list might well be better for overview, look-up, and learning compared with the run-on list in the textbook. This redesign still uses the alphabetical default, however.

The box and the color fields around the list are just design fooling around, and generate annoying and content-free visual activities (see Envisioning Information, chapter 3 this point). Why leave the text and go to a special place with a purple field, a gray frame, and a gray box just to look at a list? Sidebar materials should be selected on content grounds, and not because the mode of information is different. The gray type on the purple field seems to affect the figure/ground contrast adversely.

The table description might be better at the top. The word "Fig." is not necessary; just the bold label number is fine. Anyway, it is not a "Fig.," it is something else. Probably the list, after the redesign described above, could be simply imbedded in the text, with the caption sentence ending with a colon taking the reader into the redesigned list (on text-tables, see The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, chapter 9).

There are some typographic problems in the pathogen list as well. The spacing around the period in "2.12" is poor. The "Myc" letter combination looks awkward, maybe because of the big slanted divot in the italic cap M. The italics of the classic book typefaces are much better than the clunky italics of the pathogen list, which appear undifferentiated, too uniformly tilted and slopey, and jumpy and optically over-active. For my eye, the x-height is too big. Compare the classic book typeface in the Lodge book (in this thread immediately above) with the leaded-out sans serif italics in the medical text. Although the classic book typeface in the Lodge material is a bit small, it seems crisp and graceful, and has much better letter differentiation than the typeface for the list in the medical textbook.

-- Edward Tufte, September 12, 2006

Probably the list of pathogens in a 2004 textbook is now outdated given the pace of genomic sequencing. That rapid pace would surely be known to the authors of the table. How is the future likely expansion of the list to be noted in such a list? How can an idea about the pace of expansion be explained? Perhaps that was mentioned in the text elsewhere in the book.

One way would be to include an anticipations list based on knowledge of current research. Another way might be to provide dates of those pathogens already sequenced to indicate indirectly the increasing pace of sequencing. Another way would be to provide a small sparkline-like time-plot showing the cumulative number sequenced to date, which would in turn hint at an extrapolated total in future years. Another way would be have a sentence or two that said something like "By 2010 there will approximately be 0000 pathogens that are sequenced." Or "NIH has provided grants for sequencing 000 pathogens in the next 3 years." Or, perhaps best, simply to have one more line at the bottom of the single-column redesigned list: "Researchers in genomic sequencing expect that this list will contain 0000 pathogens by 2010." Perhaps a Kindly Contributor could redesign the textbook list into the 35-element single-column redesign and include this sentence forecasting the future list.

The list up to 2004 provides only a one-time snapshot, which might mislead a few innocents to conclude that there is somehow a finality to the list or to make naive inferences about the pathogens not shown on the list. Design should not entirely revolve around the possibility of misleading a few (well, except for runway incursions!), but still there is a bit of a problem with publishing a soon-to-be-outdated list in a textbook. The list was probably outdated at the moment the presses were printing the textbook.

More generally, it will be useful in displaying some lists to recognize their snapshot quality and to suggest what future similar lists might look like (when of course appropriate).

-- Edward Tufte, September 13, 2006

Lists used by patients to inform doctors are discussed in our thread Medical information exchange: The patient, doctor, computer triangle.

-- Edward Tufte, September 13, 2006

How to construct lists in HTML.

-- Edward Tufte, September 13, 2006

Wikipedia provides guidelines for creating lists and essay on making lists useful.

-- Dave Nash (email), September 14, 2006

Randall Jarrell in the introduction to The English in England, a collection of Kipling's short stories, mentions Kipling's mastery of lists. I believe that among the passages he cites are (from "My Son's Wife")

Everything his eyes opened upon was his very own to keep for ever. The carved four-post Chippendale bed, obviously worth hundreds; the wavy walnut William and Mary chairs--he had seen worse ones labelled twenty guineas apiece; the oval medallion mirror; the delicate eighteenth-century wire fireguard; the heavy brocaded curtains were his--all his. So, too, a great garden full of birds that faced him when he shaved; a mulberry tree, a sun-dial, and a dull, steel-coloured brook that murmured level with the edge of a lawn a hundred yards away. Peculiarly and privately his own was the smell of sausages and coffee that he sniffed at the head of the wide square landing, all set round with mysterious doors and Bartolozzi prints. He spent two hours after breakfast in exploring his new possessions. His heart leaped up at such things as sewing-machines, a rubber-tyred bath-chair in a tiled passage, a malachite-headed Malacca cane, boxes and boxes of unopened stationery, seal-rings, bunches of keys, and at the bottom of a steel-net reticule a little leather purse with seven pounds ten shillings in gold and eleven shillings in silver.

-- George Jansen (email), September 27, 2006

And a few more delicious lists

It seems that great prose writers display an amazing style when writing lists. (We would probably all be grateful to read Virginia Tufte's views on this...)

To the preceding Kipling example, may I add a Somerset Maugham favorite from The Book Bag :

There were books of all kinds. Volumes of verse, novels, philosophical works, critical studies (they say books about books are profitless, but they certainly make very pleasant reading), biographies, history; there were books to read when you were ill and books to read when your brain, all alert, craved for something to grapple with; there were books that you had always wanted to read, but in the hurry of life at home had never found time to; there were books to read at sea when you were meandering through narrow waters on a tramp steamer, and there were books for bad weather when your whole cabin creaked and you had to wedge yourself in your bunk in order not to fall out; there were books chosen solely for their length, which you took with you when on some expedition you had to travel light, and there were the books you could read when you could read nothing else.

In Spanish, one might add Jorge Luis Borges' famous list of animals; in French, Jacques Prévert's delicious Inventaire for fun, and the whole of George Pérec's Penser/Classer for thought...

-- Thomas-Xavier Martin (email), September 28, 2006

Here is the list of animals by Jorge Luis Borges from a "certain [no doubt mythical] Chinese encyclopedia":

those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.

Borges' list cleverly points to, and breaks, the assumption in most lists that the elements have a good deal in common. Most lists implicitly delimit the eligible scope of elements, and most fail to tell readers what that scope might be, a failure in domain specification.

Thus alert readers might ask about lists: What elements were considered and left out? What is the domain specification of this particular list? How would the list differ if the domain specification shifted? If we were make this list on our own, without knowledge of the presenter's list, what would our list look like? If our opponent were to make such a list, what would it look like?

-- Edward Tufte, November 9, 2006

Catching up on this thread, I noticed that the link to the W3C page on HTML lists was missing an important element: the list header tag, <lh> A simple way to add both structure and style to your lists on the web:

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/listheader.html

-- Rob Simmon (email), November 10, 2006

Lists provide a collection of variant elements all residing within the same domain. When read through eyes alert to lists, T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets contains many lists, which create the tone of a rhythmic chant. Here from the second quartet, "East Coker":

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

Or the opening of the first quartet, "Burnt Norton", which works its way through a set of echoed revisions (and is beautiful to read or to hear aloud):

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

-- Edward Tufte, November 23, 2006

From the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Sung by Ko Ko the Lord High Executioner...

Ko Ko with CHORUS OF MEN.

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, I've got a little list--I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground, And who never would be missed--who never would be missed! There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs-- All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs-- All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat-- All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like _that_-- And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist-- They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!

CHORUS. He's got 'em on the list--he's got 'em on the list; And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of 'em be missed.

There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race, And the piano-organist--I've got him on the list! And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, They never would be missed--they never would be missed! Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own; And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy, And who "doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to try"; And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist-- I don't think she'd be missed--I'm sure she'd not he missed!

CHORUS. He's got her on the list--he's got her on the list; And I don't think she'll be missed--I'm sure she'll not be missed!

And that Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife, The Judicial humorist--I've got him on the list! All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life-- They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed. And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind, Such as--What d'ye call him--Thing'em-bob, and likewise--Never-mind, And 'St--'st--'st--and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who-- The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you. But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list, For they'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!

CHORUS. You may put 'em on the list--you may put 'em on the list; And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of 'em be missed!

-- W. S. Gilbert

-- Andrew Nicholls (email), November 23, 2006

Excellent! Thank you Kindly Contributor Andrew Nicholls.

Here are links to Nixon's White House enemies list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List

http://web.archive.org/web/20030621235432/www.artsci.wustl.edu/~polisci/calvert/PolSci3103/watergate/enemy.htm

The most delightful name on the list was Joe Namath, who was described as being affiliated with the New York Giants! And then there are the many who were upset and embarrassed that they did not make the list.

-- Edward Tufte, November 23, 2006

from Rabelais, via Project Gutenberg:

Now, I prithee, go on in this torcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for one puncheon, thou shalt have threescore pipes, I mean of the good Breton wine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of Verron. Afterwards I wiped my bum, said Gargantua, with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and unpleasant torchecul; then with a hat. Of hats, note that some are shorn, and others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeties, and others with satin. The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very neat abstersion of the fecal matter.

Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs.

-- Steve Heise (email), December 13, 2006

There's ...

antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium ...

The content of the list is nothing unusual, but oh, the organizational principle! (Thanks to Tom Lehrer.)

See the whole thing at http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/science/elements.html

-- Eric Bruskin (email), December 19, 2006

Lists in interface menus and PP

Now and then the narrow bandwidth of lists presented on computer screens and bullet points on PowerPoint slides is said to be a virtue, a claim justified by loose reference to George Miller's classic 1956 paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two." That essay reviews psychological experiments that discovered people had a hard time remembering more than about 7 unrelated pieces of really dull data all at once. These studies on memorizing nonsense then led some interface designers to conclude that only 7 items belong on a list or a slide, a conclusion which can be sustained only by not reading the paper. In fact Miller's paper neither states nor implies rules for the amount of information to be shown in a presentation (except possibly for slides that consist of nonsense syllables that the audience must memorize and repeat back to a psychologist). Indeed, the deep point of Miller's paper is to suggest strategies, such as placing information within a context, that extend the reach of memory beyond tiny clumps of data.

At Williams College in September 2000, I saw George Miller give a presentation that used an optimal number of bullet points on an optimal number of slides--zero. Just a nice straightforward talk with a long narrative structure.

George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information," Psychological Review, 63 (1956), 81-97; paper posted at http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html

"Williams College to Honor Eight Renowned Scientists," September 23, 2000 http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/williams

-- Edward Tufte, April 20, 2003

I frequently find rules with "six" as the magic number of bullets. But today I came across this expanded rule from the American College of Radiology. "Follow the 666 rule: Use no more than six words per bullet, six bullets per image, and six word slides in a row. Any more words per bullet, and you don't have a bullet. More than six bullets per slide are difficult to read. By the end of six text-filled slides you have been talking for about 10 minutes without a visual." http://www.acr.org/02meeting/av.html

While the limit of six slides is a mercy, I expect that soon someone will demand that those six words be no longer than six letters.

-- David A. Nash (email), April 22, 2003

The 6-line-only rule for bullet lists seems to come up in witless PP presentations on how to make witless PP presentations. Here is the full 666 rule in action, the Haiku Rule for presentations:

-- E.T., April 23, 2003

Here is a comment by the George Miller on the scope and relevance of his classic essay:

From: George Miller

To: Mark Halpern

Subject: Re: citation for your disclaimer

Many years ago landscape architects used my +/-7 paper as a basis to pass local laws restricting the number of items on a billboard. It was funded by the big motel chains; if you run a mom-and-pop motel you have to put a lot of information on your sign, but if you have a franchise everybody knows you have hot and cold running water, color televisions, free breakfasts, etc. The restriction on billboard content was driving the small motels out of business.

The same argument was used in the Lady Bird Johnson Act to prohibit billboards within X feet of highways, and the billboard industry (a strange group that deserves an essay of its own) was hurting. They hired a man to travel around from town to town trying to refute the claims that more than 7 items of information could cause accidents. The man's wife did not like her husband being constantly on the road, so she asked him about it. He told her that the root of his trouble was some damn Harvard professor who wrote a paper about 7 bits of information. She, being herself a psychologist, said that she did not think that that was what Professor Miller's paper said.

Armed with this insight, he looked me up and told me the whole story about my career, unknown to me, in the billboard industry. There was much more to it than I have outlined here, and I was shocked. So shocked that I wrote a long letter thing to set the record straight. The letter was published in the monthly journal of the billboard industry and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of the letter an I don't recall the name of the journal (this was all back in the early 70s) so I cannot quote to you its contents. But the point was that 7 was a limit for the discrimination of unidimensional stimuli (pitches, loudness, brightness, etc.) and also a limit for immediate recall, neither of which has anything to do with a person's capacity to comprehend printed text.

If you want to quote the original article, it is on line and you can find a pointer to it at www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn. But if that is too time consuming - yes, you are right: nothing in my paper warrants asking Moses to discard any of the ten commandments.

Good luck, g.

(This is posted at http://members.shaw.ca/philip.sharman/myth.html )

-- Edward Tufte, April 26, 2003

Another citation, what I believe is an appropriate use of Miller’s ideas:

Combining a sequence of actions into a gesture related to the psychological process is called chunking: the combining of separate items of cognition into a single mental unit, a process that allows us to deal with many items as though they were one.

Raskin, Jef. The Humane Interface p. 37 (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000).

-- Robert Simmon (email), April 8, 2005

We're starting an architectural bamboo farm at Hogpen Hills Farms LLC and are putting together a library about bamboo. A helpful practical book is Jackie Heinricher, Boo-Shoot Gardens, Discovering Bamboo, (2006). A 2D list from the book (p. 67) is shown below:

-- Edward Tufte, January 29, 2007

For a charming and interesting book of lists done in very nice typography see _Schott's Original Miscellany_. Examples are at http://www.miscellanies.info/.

-- Miles Ehrlich (email), March 2, 2007

This is a fascinating thread. I continue to enjoy seeing the ways good writers use the resources of the English language to turn something as ordinary as a list into a work of art. Some months ago, contributor Thomas-Xavier Martin wrote: "It seems that great prose writers display an amazing style when writing lists. (We would probably all be grateful to read Virginia Tufte's views on this)."

One of my views is that the technique of listing or presenting items in a narrative series is highly useful not only to "great prose writers" and not just in novels but to almost anyone who writes, no matter what the genre. A series with only three or four items can work well, its effectiveness often enhanced by the context. And the series doesn't have to be nouns but can be verbs or adjectives--any part of speech or almost any syntactic structure-- appositives, clauses, prepositional phrases. Usually it is a string of the same syntactic structures, and often it hints at relationships among the lexical items it includes, along with some cumulative effect or totality. Also a good list often surprises by interrupting its sameness with variations.

In Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, I don't write much about lists as such, but there are dozens of examples among the more than a thousand wonderful sentences I quote. You might like to look especially at Parallelism, which is Chapter 12, and Syntactic Symbolism, Chapter 14. (Graphics Press, 2006)

Here are a couple of contrasting examples. Sandra Cisneros juxtaposes eleven fragments in a row, each including one or more noun phrases, all as appositives or as prepositional phrase modifiers of the page's title, "A House of My Own." They name what the house is not and is:

"Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.
Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem." (108, The House on Mango Street, Vintage Books, 1991).

Nonfiction by a former president calls for a more conventional strategy. In a long sentence, Bill Clinton introduces his series of nine items, each beginning with a verb-- select, work, begin, talk, reach and so on. Neatly organized, they accumulate quickly, dramatizing the multiple responsibilities facing a president-elect in an all-too-short transition period:

"There was so much to do: select the cabinet, important sub-cabinet officials and the White House staff; work with the Bush people on the mechanics of the move; begin briefing on national security and talk to foreign leaders; reach out to congressional leaders; finalize the economic proposals I would present to Congress; develop a plan to implement my other campaign commitments; deal with a large number of requests for meetings and the desire of many of our campaign workers and major supporters to know as soon as possible whether they would be part of the new administration; and respond to unfolding events." (447, My Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)

-- Virginia Tufte, March 21, 2007

Here's a list done spreadsheet style in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2162775/ ("Who's Blaming Whom: Where the fingers are pointing in the Bush administration meltdown. By Paul Gottschling and Dahlia Lithwick. Posted Tuesday, March 27, 2007)

This is an interesting design which raises interesting and subtle issues about list formats.

The vertical columns are way too narrow; the long thin clunky columns of type, and wasteful unhypenated line (except for "e-mail," a hard hyphen) produce a sprawling list. Also there's a lot of white space because some cells have one word, others have 60 words, as the maximum length entry determines cell depth for all entries. Because of list sprawl, the names of the scoundrels at the top of the table-list disappear after scrolling down a bit. Making the table wider will help.

In the original Slate version, it is helpful to see the categories ("how implicated," "points finger at," "conflicts with," "game plan") lined up horizontally.

The double-line grid of boxes is all wrong; a single light gray will do just fine. Using a grid to enforce location is a sure sign of bad typographic design. Using grid boxes will not undo poor typography.

The data might be displayed simply as paragraphs by scoundrel name. A competing alternative, perhaps better, is to have 4 paragraphs ("how implicated," "points finger at," "conflicts with," "game plan") and then call the roll of names each time within the paragraph.

Can a Kindly Contributor cut and paste some different options for displaying the information?

For another way to show exactly this sort of information, see Duke Cunningham's sentencing memorandum in my book Beautiful Evidence, pp. 94-95, presented to the court by Federal prosecutor Carol C. Lam and her colleagues. Lam was one of 8 federal prosecutors fired by the Department of Justice and the White House.

-- Edward Tufte, March 27, 2007

The HTML in the original table, while not great, isn't horrid, certainly not MS Office auto-code. Width was not fixed, really the right choice for the web. Problem is, the table falls under the cascading styles of the page, narrowing to something like 700 pixels. This is basically what I did in SeaMonkey:

Removed all formating
Reduced cell border from 2 to 0 (the first step in fixing any table)
Changed the font cascade from Arial to Verdana,Trebuchet,sans-serif
Reduced cell spacing from 1 to 0
Forced all cell contents to align top left
Zebra-stripped alternate rows to hex color #eee by hand, theorizing that it introduced the fewest edges.
Changed cell spacing back to 1; I think the subtle hints of white are just enough to keep the columns in order.
Changed the top margin of paragraphs to 0.3em, though this didn't seem to take in all cases, perhaps due to special characters?
There are two tables below. One with a 800 px width, which is, or is close to, the default on this site under the cascading style rules. The second table has a width of 1300 pixels, which brought several paragraphs down, though I'm not sure it's an improvement.

	ROVE	GONZALES	MIERS	McNULTY	SAMPSON	GOODLING
Title:	Presidential adviser	Attorney General	White House counsel(Resigned Jan. 4, 2007.)	Deputy Attorney General	Chief of Staff to Alberto Gonzales (Resigned March 12, 2007.)	Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison.(Took administrative leave March 26.)
How implicated:	* In 2005, New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh asks Rove to fire David Iglesias for failing to investigate Democrats for voter fraud. Rove responds, "He's gone." * White House later admits that "Rove served as a conduit for complaints to the Justice Department about federal prosecutors who were later fired."	* On Jan. 18, 2007, testified: "What we do is we make an evaluation about the performance of individuals." * March 13, 2007, press conference: "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."	* Dan Bartlett says on March 13, 2007: "And what Harriet floated was the idea of saying should we treat the fifth year as the first year--give new blood--an opportunity for new blood to come in." * Feb. 2005 e-mail from Miers to Sampson suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was her idea. Rove says that is his recollection.	Said in testimony on Feb. 6, 2007, in reference to the firings, that "the phone calls that were made back in December were performance-related."	* March 2, 2005, e-mails from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers ranking all U.S. attorneys for such qualities as "loyalty to the President and Attorney General" and praising "the vast majority of US Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal bushies, etc." * May 11, 2006, e-mail from Sampson to deputy White House counsel referencing "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam ... we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." This, one day after Lam seeks more indictments in the "Duke" Cunningham prosecution.	* April 4, 2006, participates in conference call with Sampson and others to hear complaints from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., about David Iglesias. * June 21, 2006, meets with two New Mexico lawyers Aug. 18, 2006, with heavy GOP involvement to hear their complaints about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. * brainstorms ways to bypass home-state senators in replacing Arkansas U.S. attorney.
Points finger at:	Denies * "'The White House did not play a role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys," Dan Bartlett. * Justice Department released a letter indicating it was not aware that Rove had played any role in the decision to appoint one of his former deputies as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.	Blames Sampson and other subordinates Says in March 13, 2007, press conference: "I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers ..." *March 26, 2007, says in NBC interview: "If I find out that, in fact, any of these decisions were motivated, the recommendations to me were motivated for improper reasons to interfere with the public corruption case, there will be swift and --there will be swift and decisive action."	Silence	Blames Goodling and Sampson Told Sen. Schumer: [paraphrasing] "I am sorry that I didn't tell you the truth. I was not told that these things were happening by the people who were supposed to brief me."	Confusion March 16, 2007, statement via his lawyer that he "did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys." But because "he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for a . . . political response to the unfounded accusations."	Blames McNulty In a March 26 letter to the Senate judiciary committee, Goodling's lawyer says that a DoJ official (presumably Paul McNulty) blames Goodling for failing to "inform him of certain pertinent facts." Thus she cannot testify. Also she blames the Senate panel for being biased against her.
Conflicts with:	* June 20, 2006, e-mail Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman (Subject line: "Question from Karl Rove") suggesting this all was Rove's idea. from Rove's deputy asking Monica Goodling to meet with GOP folk unhappy with David Iglesias. *	Released calendar page indicating hourlong Nov. 27 meeting with AG and at least five top DoJ officials discussing a five-step plan for carrying out the firings. * Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman "Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.	Jan 9, 2005, e-mail from Kyle Sampson to deputy White House counsel suggesting that "Judge [Gonzales] and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago ... As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys - the underperforming ones."	U.S. attorney performance evaluations. "All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed, but many ran into political trouble with Washington."	Statement by Gonzales, in press conference of March 13, 2007, that Sampson left because "incomplete information was communicated ... to the Congress ... and I am very dismayed that that may not have occurred here."	Mass of e-mails show Goodling heavily involved in planning purge; in efforts at damage control; and in attempt to get Tim Griffin the U.S. attorney job in Arkansas. E-mails also link her to Sampson and Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings.
Game plan:	Fight congressional subpoenas demanding his testimony, threatening to claim exeutive privilege.	Fight to stay in office. (Losing battle?)	Fight congressional subpoenas, claiming executive privilege.	March 26: "I have no plans to step down. ... I intend to cooperate with the Committee in anyway they choose."	Sampson "will testify that he did what he was told and will defend the power of the Justice Department to be able to fire prosecutors, because they serve at the pleasure of the White House."	This week, took the Fifth and refused to testify before Congress. Claimed panel is biased against her.

	ROVE	GONZALES	MIERS	McNULTY	SAMPSON	GOODLING
Title:	Presidential adviser	Attorney General	White House counsel(Resigned Jan. 4, 2007.)	Deputy Attorney General	Chief of Staff to Alberto Gonzales (Resigned March 12, 2007.)	Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison.(Took administrative leave March 26.)
How implicated:	* In 2005, New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh asks Rove to fire David Iglesias for failing to investigate Democrats for voter fraud. Rove responds, "He's gone." * White House later admits that "Rove served as a conduit for complaints to the Justice Department about federal prosecutors who were later fired."	* On Jan. 18, 2007, testified: "What we do is we make an evaluation about the performance of individuals." * March 13, 2007, press conference: "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."	* Dan Bartlett says on March 13, 2007: "And what Harriet floated was the idea of saying should we treat the fifth year as the first year--give new blood--an opportunity for new blood to come in." * Feb. 2005 e-mail from Miers to Sampson suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was her idea. Rove says that is his recollection.	Said in testimony on Feb. 6, 2007, in reference to the firings, that "the phone calls that were made back in December were performance-related."	* March 2, 2005, e-mails from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers ranking all U.S. attorneys for such qualities as "loyalty to the President and Attorney General" and praising "the vast majority of US Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal bushies, etc." * May 11, 2006, e-mail from Sampson to deputy White House counsel referencing "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam ... we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." This, one day after Lam seeks more indictments in the "Duke" Cunningham prosecution.	* April 4, 2006, participates in conference call with Sampson and others to hear complaints from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., about David Iglesias. * June 21, 2006, meets with two New Mexico lawyers Aug. 18, 2006, with heavy GOP involvement to hear their complaints about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. * brainstorms ways to bypass home-state senators in replacing Arkansas U.S. attorney.
Points finger at:	Denies * "'The White House did not play a role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys," Dan Bartlett. * Justice Department released a letter indicating it was not aware that Rove had played any role in the decision to appoint one of his former deputies as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.	Blames Sampson and other subordinates Says in March 13, 2007, press conference: "I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers ..." *March 26, 2007, says in NBC interview: "If I find out that, in fact, any of these decisions were motivated, the recommendations to me were motivated for improper reasons to interfere with the public corruption case, there will be swift and --there will be swift and decisive action."	Silence	Blames Goodling and Sampson Told Sen. Schumer: [paraphrasing] "I am sorry that I didn't tell you the truth. I was not told that these things were happening by the people who were supposed to brief me."	Confusion March 16, 2007, statement via his lawyer that he "did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys." But because "he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for a . . . political response to the unfounded accusations."	Blames McNulty In a March 26 letter to the Senate judiciary committee, Goodling's lawyer says that a DoJ official (presumably Paul McNulty) blames Goodling for failing to "inform him of certain pertinent facts." Thus she cannot testify. Also she blames the Senate panel for being biased against her.
Conflicts with:	* June 20, 2006, e-mail Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman (Subject line: "Question from Karl Rove") suggesting this all was Rove's idea. from Rove's deputy asking Monica Goodling to meet with GOP folk unhappy with David Iglesias. *	Released calendar page indicating hourlong Nov. 27 meeting with AG and at least five top DoJ officials discussing a five-step plan for carrying out the firings. * Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman "Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.	Jan 9, 2005, e-mail from Kyle Sampson to deputy White House counsel suggesting that "Judge [Gonzales] and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago ... As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys - the underperforming ones."	U.S. attorney performance evaluations. "All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed, but many ran into political trouble with Washington."	Statement by Gonzales, in press conference of March 13, 2007, that Sampson left because "incomplete information was communicated ... to the Congress ... and I am very dismayed that that may not have occurred here."	Mass of e-mails show Goodling heavily involved in planning purge; in efforts at damage control; and in attempt to get Tim Griffin the U.S. attorney job in Arkansas. E-mails also link her to Sampson and Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings.
Game plan:	Fight congressional subpoenas demanding his testimony, threatening to claim exeutive privilege.	Fight to stay in office. (Losing battle?)	Fight congressional subpoenas, claiming executive privilege.	March 26: "I have no plans to step down. ... I intend to cooperate with the Committee in anyway they choose."	Sampson "will testify that he did what he was told and will defend the power of the Justice Department to be able to fire prosecutors, because they serve at the pleasure of the White House."	This week, took the Fifth and refused to testify before Congress. Claimed panel is biased against her.

-- Niels Olson (email), March 27, 2007

Another way to do this that I thought of today while laying out another table. The first table is simply duplicated, half the columns deleted from each instance, and then the two are rejoined using a couple of blank rows for white space.

ROVE GONZALES MIERS

Title: Presidential adviser Attorney General
White House counsel(Resigned Jan. 4, 2007.)

How implicated:

* In 2005, New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh asks Rove to fire David Iglesias for failing to investigate Democrats for voter fraud. Rove responds, "He's gone."

* White House later admits that "Rove served as a conduit for complaints to the Justice Department about federal prosecutors who were later fired."

* On Jan. 18, 2007, testified: "What we do is we make an evaluation about the performance of individuals."

* March 13, 2007, press conference:

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."
* Dan Bartlett says on March 13, 2007: "And what Harriet floated was the idea of saying should we treat the fifth year as the first year--give new blood--an opportunity for new blood to come in."
* Feb. 2005 e-mail from Miers to Sampson suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was her idea. Rove says that is his recollection.

Points finger at:
Denies

* "'The White House did not play a role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys," Dan Bartlett.
* Justice Department released a letter indicating it was not aware that Rove had played any role in the decision to appoint one of his former deputies as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.
Blames Sampson and other subordinates Says in March 13, 2007, press conference: "I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers ..."
*March 26, 2007, says in NBC interview: "If I find out that, in fact, any of these decisions were motivated, the recommendations to me were motivated for improper reasons to interfere with the public corruption case, there will be swift and --there will be swift and decisive action."
Silence

Conflicts with: * June 20, 2006, e-mail
Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman (Subject line: "Question from Karl Rove") suggesting this all was Rove's idea. from Rove's deputy asking Monica Goodling to meet with GOP folk unhappy with David Iglesias. *

Released

calendar page indicating hourlong Nov. 27 meeting with AG and at least five top DoJ officials discussing a five-step plan for carrying out the firings.
* Jan 6, 2005, e-mail from Colin Newman "Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc. Jan 9, 2005, e-mail from Kyle Sampson to deputy White House counsel suggesting that "Judge [Gonzales] and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago ... As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys - the underperforming ones."

Game plan: Fight congressional subpoenas demanding his testimony, threatening to claim exeutive privilege. Fight to stay in office. (Losing battle?) Fight congressional subpoenas, claiming executive privilege.

McNULTY SAMPSON GOODLING

Title: Deputy Attorney General Chief of Staff to Alberto Gonzales (Resigned March 12, 2007.)
Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison.(Took administrative leave March 26.)

How implicated:
Said in testimony on Feb. 6, 2007, in reference to the firings, that "the phone calls that were made back in December were performance-related." * March 2, 2005, e-mails from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers ranking all U.S. attorneys for such qualities as "loyalty to the President and Attorney General" and praising "the vast majority of US Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal bushies, etc."
* May 11, 2006, e-mail from Sampson to deputy White House counsel referencing "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam ... we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." This, one day after Lam seeks more indictments in the "Duke" Cunningham prosecution.
* April 4, 2006, participates in conference call with Sampson and others to hear complaints from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., about David Iglesias.
* June 21, 2006, meets with two New Mexico lawyers Aug. 18, 2006, with heavy GOP involvement to hear their complaints about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

* brainstorms ways to bypass home-state senators in replacing Arkansas U.S. attorney.

Points finger at:
Blames Goodling and Sampson

Told Sen. Schumer: [paraphrasing] "I am sorry that I didn't tell you the truth. I was not told that these things were happening by the people who were supposed to brief me."
Confusion

March 16, 2007, statement via his lawyer that he "did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys." But because "he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for a . . . political response to the unfounded accusations."
Blames McNulty

In a March 26 letter to the Senate judiciary committee, Goodling's lawyer says that a DoJ official (presumably Paul McNulty) blames Goodling for failing to "inform him of certain pertinent facts." Thus she cannot testify. Also she blames the Senate panel for being biased against her.

Conflicts with: U.S. attorney performance evaluations. "All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed, but many ran into political trouble with Washington."
Statement by Gonzales, in press conference of March 13, 2007, that Sampson left because "incomplete information was communicated ... to the Congress ... and I am very dismayed that that may not have occurred here."
Mass of e-mails show Goodling heavily involved in planning purge; in efforts at damage control; and in attempt to get Tim Griffin the U.S. attorney job in Arkansas. E-mails also link her to Sampson and Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings.

Game plan: March 26: "I have no plans to step down. ... I intend to cooperate with the Committee in anyway they choose."
Sampson "will testify that he did what he was told and will defend the power of the Justice Department to be able to fire prosecutors, because they serve at the pleasure of the White House."
This week, took the Fifth and refused to testify before Congress. Claimed panel is biased against her.

-- Niels Olson (email), March 29, 2007

Following are three additional possibilities for reworking the Slate U.S. Attorney table.

In the first, I addressed the use of the table format to see if anything might be done in addition to Niels' recoding above. One of the difficulties, mentioned by Dr. Tufte above in regard to the Slate list but also the case with Niels' revisions, is that the names of the scoundrels disappear as you scroll down to read the entries. One way to remedy this is to rearrange the table to read horizontally, as I did below. Properly sized with an appropriate font, the entire list of a person's activities will be readable without scrolling horizontally. And most of this particular list of individuals will also be visible on a single screen. On my 17 inch flatscreen, Rove, Gonzales, Miers and McNulty can all be seen at once, leaving only Sampson and Goodling to be scrolled down to.

The cell headings (How implicated, Points finger at, Conflicts with, and Game plan) are laid out horizontally, and are provided with each person, avoiding a loss of the headings as one scrolls down. One with greater web authoring acumen than I (which is basically none) might be able to set the headings just once at the top of the table and then provide a scrolling frame underneath, eliminating the redundancy of the recurring headings. I don't think this approach will make the list look any better, though.

Each person's name and title provides all the transitional break needed between sections, removing the need for gridlines, color breaks or other separators.

The issue of extended, and variable, white space under selected entries remains with this scheme, but is less objectionable as the cells are wider than originally provided, making for shorter cell depths overall.

I dropped the asterisk "bullets" for each entry, feeling that they indicate references to non-existent footnotes, and used instead an em dash set outboard of the commentary to mark each comment. Links I've indicated by a change of color in the text along with underlined type; I haven't formed a firm opinion on this but I seem to prefer this double indicator over other link markers or mouse-over effects.

In the following two examples, I explored Dr. Tufte's suggestion regarding restructuring the list as a series of paragraphs.

The first is organized by the four cited actions, with each participant listed within the section. In order to keep a neat appearance of the individual's name within each section, I provide a legend at the start of the list and use only their last names thereafter.

The second organizes the list by participant, with each action then itemized. With this scheme, I can list each person's full name and title as the heading of each section, eliminating the legend.

Each of the paragraph schemes reduces the amount of space needed to provide the information for a given font size, and has the added benefit of being able to be scaled in width to match the monitor size of the reader. I generally prefer to read the narrative information I get, so I must say I'd like either of the latter schemes over any of the tabular lay outs. Charged with making a choice, I'd go for organizing the list by individual, since they are the ones that initiated the actions.

Wouldn't it have been interesting to see what Mark Lombardi would have made of all this?

-- Steve Sprague (email), March 30, 2007

The original Slate table, a wonderfully provocative example, might serve best as a reporter's worksheet to organize the facts and also a guide to reporting (by requiring that all cells be filled). But its graphic organization causes news sprawl and also mutes the time dimension. Perhaps a timeline design would be worth looking at.

I hope our contributors will keep pursuing this graphic list, which will surely have some spicy new extensions in the next few weeks.

The Huffington Post displayed a vivid editorial graphic concerning the testimony of the former chief of staff at the Department of Justicewho said "I don't remember" 122 times during his day-long Senate testimony. THP presented 122 thumbnail pictures of him spread over several long rows. Can a Kindly Contributor please post that image at our thread on single-number graphics?

-- Edward Tufte, April 2, 2007

My favorite essay on nutrition is Michael Pollan's Unhappy Meals, from the 28 January 2007 New York Times. In illustrating the complexity of food compared to simple nutrients, Michael uses a list very similar to Mims's list of organisms with sequenced genomes (see my post above from September 2006) but puts his list in body text to much better effect:

Indeed, to look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here's a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety thyme:
4-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid, gallic acid, gamma-terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.
This is what you're ingesting when you eat food flavored with thyme

-- Niels Olson (email), July 21, 2007

Here is Richard Serra's list of verbs:

Source: http://www.ubu.com/concept/serra_verb.html

-- Edward Tufte, July 30, 2007

Look-up List

This should clear everything up:

-- Edward Tufte, September 27, 2007

Looks pretty, but doesn't work for my building at 790 Riverside Dr. (cross street W. 157 St.).

ARJ

-- Ann Rae Jonas (email), September 27, 2007

Walmart just announced an expansion of their discount generic drug program yesterday, so I stopped by Walmart and their main competitor, Target, to see what my patients experience when they go to get these drugs. The most obvious difference when walking into the pharmacies is that Target has done a much better job of labeling their shelves of non-prescription drugs. ET has commented elsewhere on Target's adoption of better design ideas for drug bottles, though they haven't extended the same bottle designs to their in-house over-the-counter bottles. But the reason I'm posting this here is to compare the drug lists, which is the only part of the program the doctors see. Which discount generic drug list do you think your doctor would be more inclined to refer to during a busy day seeing patients at the clinic, Target's or Walmart's?

Here are links to the resources available online:

Target $4 drug list

Walmart $4 drug list

Below are sample pages from the lists I got from the pharmacy counters this morning. One thing worth noting is that doctors tend to fold 8.5x11 papers the long way and stuff them in the inner pockets of their white coats, so the two column layout of both lists is a very good thing; I hope the designers realize this and keep to that format in the future.

You'll also find the full Walmart list takes up 2.5 pages while the Target list is 4.25 pages. This is in part because Target spends more space in the header and footer, but also because Target cross-references drugs, such as ibuprofen, which doctors prescribe for different reasons for different people. I think both lists could be improved by using title-case instead of all-caps.

-- Niels Olson (email), September 28, 2007

Paul Graham's Writing, Briefly.

Paul Graham's Writing Briefly.png

-- Niels Olson (email), October 6, 2007

This website may be interesting to some of the regulars to this thread. The Enquiring Minds Project is looking for examples of thinking templates and ways to help children organise information for decision making.

"The Exploratree web resource has been developed by Futurelab and emerged out of our work on the Enquiring Minds project. It provides a series of ready-made interactive 'thinking guides' or 'frameworks' which can support students' projects and research. Thinking guides support the thinking or working through of an issue, topic or question and help to shape, define and focus an idea and also support the planning required to investigate it further. Exploratree guides can be used as a basis for whole class discussion, or emailed to individuals or groups to complete."

EXPLORA TREE : http://www.exploratree.org.uk/

-- Tchad (email), November 5, 2007

Well Designed Interactive List/Graphic

List of top home run hitters in baseball, with an associated interactive graphic.

I spent 20 minutes exploring this today.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/sports/20070731_BONDS_GRAPHIC.html

-- Matt Noreen (email), November 16, 2007

Illustrated lists

Interesting example of an illustrated list (for leaf morphology). Click on the full-resolution file for a good look.

There is surely a better order than alphabetical (the alpha order runs vertically once, and horizontally twice). Very rarely should lists be in alphabetical order. A structural order will make the various distinctions easier to remember and understand. For example, doubly serrate, serrate, and serrulate might all be in the same row; bipinnate and tripinnate should be adjacent; and so on. A more daring order might be the relative frequency of each pattern in the world or in a region.

All 12 boxes should go. Title type: smaller, no drop shadows, no outline of the letters, avoid typeface with odd serifs. These design changes will help open up some space for more detail about the 3 variables.

Are there more detailed classifications? Less detailed? How many of the 4,320 possible combinations of characteristics actually exist? What is the domain of these leaves: the whole world, or a particular region? Did the information come from a field guide for the world's trees, or for some part of the world?

Pinnate occurs in the shape and the venation categories--is that a problem?

The original source for the leaf classification must be credited. The designer should put her/his name on the work.

Finally, are there competing graphics that show the same information? How about the various fields guides to trees?

-- Edward Tufte, November 22, 2007

Fascinating article about how checklists save lives in the Medical field.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande

-- Bill Paton (email), December 7, 2007

Dickens wrote some great lists, including this one from A Christmas Carol:

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceilings were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known... Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chesnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

I posted this last Christmas, inspired by this thread. Thanks Dr. Tufte!

-- Timothy (email), December 14, 2007

Steinbeck lists

John Steinbeck, in the Introduction to Cannery Row, lists, lists, lists:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

-- Edward Tufte, March 8, 2008

Steinbeck & Rickets Lists

Dear ET,

your use of a Steinbeck list has prompted me to share a brilliant list made by Steinbecks long time collaborator Ed Ricketts. Ricketts was the model for at least 6 of Steinbecks most memorable characters, most notably perhaps "Doc" of Cannery Row.

Ricketts was not fictional. He was a ground breaking marine biologist, ecologist, traveller and philosopher. I would recommend the interested reader to find the recently published collection of his travelogues "Breaking Through" (edited by K.A. Rodger) which has some of the best lists I have come across.

One of the most interesting pieces of writing in "Breaking Through" is a "Verbatim Transciption" of the trip that Ricketts and Steinbeck took to Baja and subsequently retold in "Log from the Sea of Cortez" by Steinbeck. Ricketts recorded things as the trip progressed and Steinbeck later tidied it up for publication. There are some excellent lists but the one below is one of my favourites and describes the blend of human and biological impressions made on Ricketts whilst in the La Paz area on Friday March 22 1940 (this appears on page 151 of Breaking Through).

"The peso is 5-1/2 or 6 to 1 here. I bought swank-looking huaraches for one dollar and one peso (7 pesos) and a fine iguana belt for 2.50 pesos; Epsom salts at a clothing store, Casa Gomez, one peso per kilo. I liked the blonde daughter. The girl in the pharmacy, I found entirely charming. The people are wonderful here. Ice is cinco centavos per kilo; not very good ice, tho. A quarter liter of Carta Blanca beer is 30 centavos per bottle, about 10 pesos per case, with 2.50 peso bottle return. I got 3 cigars from Sr. Gomez from his personal stock for 60 centavos, twisted - not wonderful, but satisfactory - Vera Cruz tobacco.

Borette is the poisonous puffer fish; its liver is said to be so poisonous that people use it to poison cats and flies.

Cornada is the hammerhead shark.

Barco is the red snapper.

Caracol (also Burrol) is the term for snails in general, particularly for the large conch for blowing like a horn.

Erizo is urchins, both kinds.

Abanico is sea fan, gorgonian.

Broma is barnacle.

Hacha is pinna, large clam."

Best wishes

Matt

-- Matt R (email), March 12, 2008

Aviation is replete with checklists. One thing that you will never see in an aviation checklist is a bullet. Each item on a checklist is one line, typically challenge/response, e.g., "Thrust Reversers......Armed". Perhaps on one checklist out of 10 there will be an item that is a bit too long to fit on one line in a column. The continuation of the line will be indicated by whitespace underneath the challenge portion of the line and the continuation of the response underneath the first part of the response.

If aviation can have tens of thousands of lists and no bullets, how come PowerPoint presentations can't survive without bullets? Bullets are essential when you can't summon the discipline to make each item roughly the same length, or at least make each item fit on one line.

How are checklists used in a two-pilot airplane?

The first kind of checklist is read silently by a pilot who is preparing part of the airplane while the co-pilot is off doing something else. This checklist is designed simply to remind the pilot to do everything necessary.

The second kind of checklist is read aloud by one of the two pilots, e.g., the climb checklist (gear up; flaps up; thrust reversers off; ...). This not only reminds the pilot of stuff that he or she may have forgotten but gives the co-pilot assurance that important tasks have been accomplished.

The third kind of checklist is read aloud by the two pilots as a team. For each line pilot reads the challenge item and one reads the respond item. This is done when you want to be absolutely sure that both pilots are paying attention. The before landing checklist is done this way: "Landing Gear: DOWN; Flaps: SET 45, INDICATING 45; Thrust Reversers: ARMED" (lower case read by pilot monitoring; UPPER CASE read by pilot flying (in airline operations these roles are swapped on every leg by the captain and first officer)).

Checklists are so important in airline operations that all checklists are run all the time, e.g., if an airliner were doing a simple takeoff and left turn around the pattern to land again, possibly for a maintenance check, the pilots would do lineup, climb, 10,000', cruise, descent, approach, and landing checklists. This despite the fact that the airplane was never up to 10,000', was never in cruise flight, never descended except from 1,500' to the runway, and did not do an instrument approach.

-- Philip Greenspun (email), May 28, 2008

This tour of desktop strata from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow explores the bivariant impact of object size and frequency-of-use on list position. It also exhibits the daring nested list (last quarter of the paragraph), from which Pynchon deftly recovers with a simple ". . .".

-- Justin Vaughn (email), November 30, 2008

Surgical checklists

"Simple Checklist Makes Surgery Safer," Eric Nagourney, The New York Times, January 20, 2009

-- Edward Tufte, January 14, 2009

bsd

the Brigham catches up to the NFL. these lists look like the sideline cheat-sheets that NFL coaches and quarterbacks use during football games.

-- BW (email), January 15, 2009

In response to the post of September 12, 2006 and Edward Tufte's response, I offer the following.

The major classification of any bacteria is its response to a Gram stain, an assay that begins by staining with crystal violet stain. The bacterium is then classified as Gram positive or Gram negative. As usual, a simple google search will describe the assay in detail.

In scientific journals, it is common to abbreviate the full name of a bacteria into the first letter of its genus and then the full name of the species. For example, Staphylococcus aureus would be abbreviated into S. aureus.

In redesigning the classification, I categorized by Gram stain, then stuck to a bacterium's typical abbreviation in the literature. Any comments are welcomed.

-- Praveen Tipirneni (email), January 18, 2009

I can't resist adding this to the literary lists quoted above:

"Venal & Sons has at last published the long-awaited first volume of Metterling's laundry lists (The Collected Laundry Lists of Hans Metterling, Vol. I, 437 pp., plus XXXII-page introduction; indexed; $18.75), with an erudite commentary by the noted Metterling scholar Gunther Eisenbud. The decision to publish this work separately, before the completion of the immense four-volume oevure, is both welcome and intelligent, for this obdurate and sparkling book will instantly lay to rest the unpleasant rumors that Venal & Sons, having reaped rich rewards from the Metterling novels, play, and notebooks, diaries, and letters, was merely in search of continued profits from the same lode. How wrong the whisperers have been! Indeed, the very first Metterling laundry list
LIST NO. 1
6 prs. shorts
4 undershirts
6 prs. blue socks
4 blue shirts
2 white shirts
6 handkerchiefs
No Starch
serves as a perfect, near total introduction to this troubled genius . . ."
-- "The Metterling Lists," from Woody Allen, Getting Even (1971)

-- David Kirchner (email), April 30, 2009

I'd like to contribute to this fascinating thread by updating the information about lists in HTML to the newest specifications: HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0. These specifications support three types of non-deprecated lists, each with it's own semantic usage scenarios: ordered, unordered and definition.

Ordered Lists

An ordered list is rendered as a set of items, each of which is preceded by the numerical index value of that item's position within the set. As such, this element should be used when the order of the items in the list is significant to the viewer (including the search engine bot for which semantically correct markup is meaningful). The code for an ordered list consists of a container element(<ol>)and one or more list elements (<li>). Below is the code and rendering of a 3-item ordered list.

<ol>
   <li>First Element</li>
   <li>Second Element</li>
   <li>Third Element</li>
</ol>

First Element
Second Element
Third Element

Unordered Lists

An unordered list is rendered as the typical bulleted list which is designed to denote a set of items without prioritizing an item more than another (debatable since to the eye and perhaps psychologically the items are certainly ordered). The code consists of a container element(<ul>) and one or more list elements (<li>).

<ul>
   <li>An Item</li>
   <li>Another Item</li>
   <li>And another</li>
</ul>

First Element
Second Element
Third Element

Definition Lists

The definition list is the least known list in HTML but is the most useful. It consists of a term or heading followed by one or more descriptions of the term and then optionally followed by another term and so on. The code consists of a container element(<dl>), term elements (<dt>) and definition elements (<dd>).

<dl>
   <dt>Moraxella</dt>
   <dd>catarrhalis</dd>
   <dt>Mycobacterium</dt>
   <dd>avium</dd>
   <dd>bovis</dd>
   <dd>leprae</dd>
   <dd>tuberculosis</dd>
   <dt>Mycolplasma</dt>
   <dd>genitalium</dd>
   <dd>pneumoniae</dd>
</dl>

Moraxella: catarrhalis
Mycobacterium: avium; bovis; leprae; tuberculosis
Mycolplasma: genitalium; pneumoniae

More information on lists in HTML can be found here.

I should also mention that the default styling of HTML elements can be overridden or controlled using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). For information on CSS go here.

Jarrod Dungan

-- Jarrod Dungan (email), May 19, 2009

On a related note, my company is working on standardizing its Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) forms, which are more or less checklists. I am searching for the most readable and most precise method of presenting the information contained in a sequence of steps. Our current way to show this information is a hierarchical numbered list of steps:

2    Complete or Update Manual Entries (Yellow and Green Columns)
        2.1    Enter Layout Picks for each panel product size (length and width)
        2.2    If multiple sizes then:	
	 	2.2.1     Enter net member lengths, net assembly widths, net 
                          assembly lengths
		2.2.2     Enter backer & / or dowel indexes 
	2.3    Enter corresponding assembly quantities
	2.4    Confirm links to STA, MPA, etc.

This hierarchical numbering system seems to be the industry-standard as well, but I'm not convinced there isn't a better way.

The more nested a step is, the more ridiculous the numbering system (step 2.2.2 and beyond) and the more the organization takes over the page. We end up with blocks of numbers indented ?? of the way into the page. I recognize the need to avoid the imprisonment of content by the organizational system.

I'm struggling to find a better method. These SOPs can grow larger than a dozen pages, and the numbering helps other documents to refer to a specific step.

One suggestion was to gray out all numbers except the last one, e.g. for step 2.2.2 above, only the last two would be black and the rest would be a lighter shade of gray. This helps somewhat, but isn't perfect and is hard to implement.

From research into a pilots' checklist, I found that they are constructed with two columns: one listing the subject of the action, and the other listing either a verb or an adjective. I've uploaded an example to http://drop.io/pilotschecklist . Of course, this format does not allow for hierarchical steps, but it is appealingly simple.

-- Nathan Hunt (email), June 11, 2009

Genetic sequencing

Update to September 13, 2006 discussion of list sequencing targets:

http://www.genome.gov/10002154

-- Edward Tufte, July 17, 2009

Replacements and clunkers

The Transportation Department revealed that the Ford Explorer topped the list of most traded-in clunkers, while the Toyota Corolla was the most popular car purchased through the program, followed by the Honda Civic. The top 10 traded-in vehicles were American brands and eight of the top 10 purchased vehicles were foreign brands.

Top 10 New Vehicles Purchased

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Toyota Camry
4. Ford Focus
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Nissan Versa
7. Toyota Prius
8. Honda Accord
9. Honda Fit
10. Ford Escape FWD

Top 10 Trade-in Vehicles

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Ford Explorer 2WD
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
6. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
9. Ford F150 Pickup 4WD
10. Ford Windstar FWD Van

For full statistics, see the Transportation Department press release here.

Source: The New York Times, Wednesday, August 26, 2009

-- Edward Tufte, August 26, 2009

I like short descriptions accompanying statistics, to ensure I'm seeing things as I should be. This paragraph fails, in that regard, given the differing 58 / 59 percentages.

Average Fuel Economy

New vehicles Mileage: 24.9 MPG Trade-in Mileage: 15.8 MPG Overall increase: 9.2 MPG, or a 58% improvement

Cars purchased under the program are, on average, 19% above the average fuel economy of all new cars currently available, and 59% above the average fuel economy of cars that were traded in. This means the program raised the average fuel economy of the fleet, while getting the dirtiest and most polluting vehicles off the road.

-- Michael Round (email), August 28, 2009

An exhibition at the Louvre on lists (Nov 7th, 2009 to Feb 8th, 2010)

The Louvre Museum in Paris (France) has just opened a temporary exhibition on lists of all kind. The exhibition's title is "Mille e tre : a vertigo of lists" and it has been designed by Umberto Eco.

There is an interesting interview of Eco on the subject of the exhibition in the Spiegel.

The Louvre website is generally a pain to navigate, but you will find info in English starting from this page presenting the current exhibitions at the Louvre.

"Mille e tre" has opened on November 7th, 2009 and will close on February 8th, 2010.

I'm a parisian, and I intend to go see this exhibition at some point, and I probably will offer a review on this thread.

As I'm probably not the only reader of AskET intending to go see this exhibition, any reader that would be interested in doing this together is invited to get in touch ; I'm willing to organize a group visit if necessary and/or useful.

I can be reached a txm (at) polytechnique.org, or through Skype at "thomas-xavier.martin" ; I'd be delighted to have a small part of the brilliant AskET community make the jump from virtual forum to real-life encounters !

-- Thomas-Xavier Martin (email), November 16, 2009

Looking over the prescription chart, I was struck by the amount of visual noise introduced by the repetition of elements, where the differnce between one row and the next was simply dosage.

So, with about 3 minutes of (very unprofessional) paintshop editing, I cleaned it up.

Admittedly, this could probably be accomplished with a different approach, using columns, but I think this presents a much more readable table.

-- Woody Stodden (email), November 19, 2009

More on the lists of sequenced of bacteria

Figure 1 from D Wu, P Hugenholtz, et al. A phylogeny-driven genomic encyclopaedia of Bacteria and Archaea Nature 462, 1056-1060(24 December 2009). The red ones have been adopted for sequencing by the GEBA project.