by Steven Few

Steven Few is an unsung hero of information visualization. Steadily he toils in the shadow of The Great and Wonderful Tufte as the vanguard of business intelligence dashboards. Few writes practical, clear, no-nonsense advice about information-dense dashboards. He focuses on execution, not theory, and for that, his most popular title, Now You See It, is great foundational reading.

Few highlights the power of visualizations to help us “think with our eyes” and overcome the limits of human memory (see The Magical Number Seven). From small multiples to brushing data on dashboards, he emphasizes externalizing information processing to help the brain do what it does best — recognize patterns.

Few also covers a surprising amount of data analysis in Now You See It. The book provides an approachable introduction to data science, from navigating data to common patterns in time-series, deviation, distribution, correlation, and multivariate data. The below graphic is a great example of Few’s approach: here, Few regroups data by month to correct for periodicity and adds an average to help the reader see the patterns in the data.