Tufte refutes Tufte
In several places in the early pages of Visual Explanations , Edward Tufte seems to imply that the only good sort of explanation is a quantitative explanation. Consider the following passage (which is just one such example): "More generally, when scientific images become dequantified, the language of analysis may drift toward credulous descriptions of form, pattern, and configuration — rather than answers to the questions How many? How often? Where? How much? At what rate? " The funny thing is, Tufte's own book is a stellar refutation of the notion that the only good explanation is a quantitative explanation. While Tufte's book is about quantitative analysis, it itself is not an exercise in quantitative analysis. And yet it is filled with outstanding, non-quatitative explanations.