I’m sure Edward Tufte spends fully 50% of his time patiently explaining to people that the ingenious graphical map elucidating Napoleon’s march on Russia and its ill-fated aftermath were, in fact, the work of Charles Joseph Minard (1781-1870), not Edward Tufte himself, despite the inexplicable fact that Minard’s map appears as the most common result in a Google image search for “Tufte”.
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But does anybody listen? No.
So we end up living in an unfair world in which Tufte becomes widely mis-credited with Minard’s brilliant creation, in spite of the unceasing and commendable self-effacement with which Mr. Tufte himself no doubt tries to explain these facts to anyone who will listen.
Yet if one individual is to be credited with bringing the visual display of quantitative information into modern consciousness, it is surely the writer, director, comedienne and actor Elaine May, who popularized the essential concepts back in 1967, as you can see in the following succinct yet powerful demonstration:
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Heh heh! Where do you find these things?!