Comment on “A Model for Studying Display Methods of Statistical Graphics”

Abstract

I find Bill Cleveland's paper interesting because it argues in favor of a dichotomous framework for collection of visual information that we can develop to improve methods for graphical analysis. We would all like to believe in statistical holography; that is, that there is some instrument for looking at data (microscope, macroscope, tweezers, telescope ...) that would enable us to reconstruct the whole picture from a fragment or a distorted one, just as a piece of a holographic plate contains (in harder to read, fuzzier form) the whole, or original picture. The instrument we have at hand for casting some useful light on the is a system formed by a computer screen with several graphical windows: a command window that accesses a statistical toolbox, a keyboard and a mouse in front of which lies the key to the system, and the best neural net available-a brain. It is important to establish how to optimize the whole system, and taking into account interfaces and some things we know about the brain helps. Table look-up and pattern recognition characterize two separate brain functions that I will label, for historical reasons, left-brain and right-brain functions. Although today's picture of the brain is a mixture between patchwork and network, I will use the left-brain/right-brain metaphor-as illustrated in Figure 1-to stress that the brain does two (at least) different things at the same time and in a completely different way: