Nicole Mark

A really interesting conversation between Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has studied how emotions show up in facial expressions, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Considering the strengths and weaknesses of the eastern and western approaches to how we feel, respond to, and think about emotions was a worthwhile thought experiment for me, and has led to additional introspection (and dare I say, a bit of behavior change) on my part.

Metaxas is a skilled writer and makes the important point that the success of our system of government requires strong moral values. The problem is, he argues solely for Protestant Christian values and doesn't allow for the possibility of secular morality and ethics or other faiths. I almost gave up on the book after two chapters, but decided to challenge myself to try to see his point of view. If he changed the words “religion” or “Christianity” to “morality”, I'd recommend this book to others. Alas, I cannot.

My background in health care is probably to blame for my lack of excitement about most of the emergency room dramas related in this memoir, but it was an easy-to-read and well-written account of life as an emergency medicine physician. Austin's personal life interested me more–his roundabout path to medical school, his marriage, and his struggle to balance a clinical attitude with compassion.

Comprehensive overview of American mental health policy from Colonial times to the early 1990s. Grob compassionately illuminates the complexities of the problems posed by mental illness throughout our nation's history. Never neglecting the complexity of the issue, he details the historical shortcomings and victories which have brought us to our current mental health policy.

Thoughtful and thought-provoking inquiry into the nature of depressive illness. Karp's interviews and insights really capture the essence of what it feels like to be depressed and exactly how difficult it is to find one's way through it. Excellent analysis of the interplay of culture and self with regards to identity management, medication decisions, family involvement, and societal pressure to conform to a Western treatment model.

My data visualization library contains many books authored by and geared toward data practitioners. Many good books. But Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization is the first I’ve read that combines theory, research, and practice into its singular vision of data visualization as a medium yet remains accessible to a more general audience.

It's a refreshingly different dataviz text. Integral to what makes it different from other books is the synthesis of perspectives of two women with very different backgrounds--Bridget Cogley was an American Sign Language interpreter prior to her data career, and Vidya Setlur is a researcher particularly interested in natural language processing (NLP). The give and take between perspectives makes the book read like a conversation.

The material presented, particularly in later chapters, is complex, but the method and order of presentation makes it easily consumable. Since it is, in fact, a book about visual communication, it’s unsurprising that there are visual cues in the book. What’s remarkable is the effectiveness of the choices of subtle visual cues. They gently guide you through the material, making sure you’re following the conversation. The bottom of each page is bordered with one of four colors each mapped to one of the four parts of the text–Perception, Semantics, Intent, and Putting It All Together. Next to each important concept, there’s a rounded rectangle with some explanatory text and an accompanying triangle with the word “research” at one point, and “practice” and “theory” at the other two points, respectively. There is a circle inside the triangle, placed to orient the reader to where the concept is currently situated in the landscape of the field of data visualization.

You’re not getting any freebies from Bridget Cogley and Vidya Setlur. No new “best” practices, no “nevers” or “always”, no five easy steps to he perfect dashboard. This book makes no assumptions about your profession, your industry, or your opinion about pie charts. In fact, the only assumption it makes is that you’re a human who can read or be read to. For those of us who are practitioners, Functional Aesthetics challenges us to not only follow the conversation contained within, but to continue it. It subtly nudges us to engage in a conversation between ourselves as creators of data visualizations, our established processes, our assumptions, and our workflows. I took my time reading it because each section left me wanting time to integrate and experiment with some of the ideas in my own visualizations and to re-examine my long-held notions of the “right” ways to approach dataviz.

If you’re new to data visualization, I can’t think of a better book to start with. If you’re a long-time practitioner, Functional Aesthetics will freshen your perspective, leaving you excited to approach your next viz with a beginner’s mind. Everyone’s needs are considered here, and all are invited to the conversation.

Many, if not most, data visualization books focus on the data visualization creator's perspective and goals for their work almost exclusively. This emphasis on the practitioner’s goals is not wrong and doesn’t mean that the user, viewer, or audience is excluded. They’re very much top of mind–as a consumer of what the practitioner wants to serve up, in terms of both graphs and insights. Considerations about the user’s goals with respect to interaction with data visualizations are mostly limited to cases where the user is a business person consuming a business data visualization ("dashboard").

Business stakeholders occupy little space in Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization, except as users of visualizations like any other user. We now live in a world where we all look at charts and graphs for a variety of reasons. Functional Aesthetics is very much a book for chart creators, but also for chart consumers who might be curious about how charts work and want to increase their level of graphicacy (chart literacy).