Telestrator–the electronic crayon
April 23, 2009 | Edward Tufte
1 Comment(s)
From Slate, a well-crafted video about the Telestrator, John Madden, and beyond:
http://www.slatev.com/player.html?id=1399217125
The Telestrator maps images, as described in the first chapter of Beautiful Evidence, with pieces of that chapter here:
https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001V7&topic_id=1
Topics: E.T.
The Telestrator offers viewers a diagrammatic picture (often without words) for complex activities (most notably in football). What’s interesting about it is that even though the Telestrator’s “ink” exists in flatland, it has been used to some effect in a tri-axial manner (for example, height above the xy plane of field goal kicks or throws is represented with curvilinears).
What’s interesting is that added camera perspectives have reduced the reliance on the Telestrator. Different camera perspectives shouldn’t eliminate strategy lines because their purpose is to draw the viewer’s eye to the expected position of players in the future. This is analagous to making a bar chart three dimensional in order to eliminate a trend line.