Book Review: "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" by Donna Wong posted by Rick Howard

Filed in: Wall Street Journal

I just finished reading "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" by Donna Wong. A couple of weeks ago, I went on a fan-boy rant regarding the research and writings of Dr. Edward Tufte; who in my opinion, is the smartest person on the planet when it comes to conveying complex ideas in a chart. His books and lectures over the years have really helped me convey complex security ideas to my bosses and customers. However, the downside to Doctor Tufte's methods is that he does not make it easy for you. He expects you to wade through the entire set of books (count 'em, four in all) and decide for yourself. He gives no executive summaries, no bullet points and definitely no accompanying PowerPoint slide decks. Enter Ms. Wong.

According to the back cover, Ms. Wong has been doing information graphics for more than 20 years and she was a student of Doctor Tufte back in the day. Compared to Tufte though, Wong is concise; her thin book of 149 pages is a how-to book for creating effective charts; mostly for newspaper-type publications as the title implies.

This is not a book you read cover to cover. It is more of a cook book. Want to know how to do a line chart? Turn to page 49 and admire the layout. On the left page, Wong describes all the incorrect ways to do it. "Never shade below a line unless the chart has a zero baseline." On the right, she shows all the ways to do a line chart correctly. "Choose the y-axis scale so that the height of the fever line occupies roughly two-thirds of the chart area." On both pages, she outlines the dos and don'ts in a terse and easy-to-read form. Unlike Tufte, she is not giving you the history of line charts from the beginning of time to the present. She just gives her opinions based on 20 years of industry experience. If you are in a hurry, this is a book to keep on your shelf regardless if you are just beginning your security career or if you are a grizzled veteran.

My only knock on the book is that as the reader gets to latter parts, the examples tend to be more and more specific to journalism; mostly financial journalism; however, this is a minor knock. You can learn a lot by spending three or four hours perusing this book. You can definitely make your own charts better if you review the appropriate section of Ms. Wong's book before you go final with your own chart designs. I think it is so valuable that I am going to add it to my own recommended book list for security professionals. For those of you following along at home, here is the latest list:

Novels and Books for Historical Context
(You should have read these by now.)
"Neuromancer" by William Gibson
"The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage" by Cliff Stoll
"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
"Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords" by Joseph Menn

Current State-of-the-Art Books
"Cyber Fraud: Tactics, Techniques and Procedures" by iDefense (shameless plug)

Books You Should Hand Your New Boss as He Comes in the Door
"Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World" by Bruce Schneier

Good Hacker Novels that Don't Exaggerate the Genre
"The Blue Nowhere: A Novel" by Jeffery Deaver

Interesting Cyber Security Novels that I Just Liked
"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson
"Killobyte" by Piers Anthony
"The Zenith Angle" by Bruce Sterling

Gaming and Future Intelligence Collection
"Daemon" by Daniel Suarez
"Halting State" by Charles Stross

Information Design
"The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition" by Edward Tufte
"Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative" by Edward Tufte
"Envisioning Information" by Edward Tufte
"Beautiful Evidence" by Edward Tufte
"The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" by Donna Wong

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