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Abstract Five books on charts and graphs are reviewed from the standpoint of cognitive psychology. The review focuses on properties of the human visual information-processing system, and it considers how well the recommendations offered by each book work within the strengths and weaknesses of that system. The books reviewed are Semiology of Graphs, by J. Bertin (translated by W. J. Berg) (1983); Graphical Methods for Data Analysis, by J. M. Chambers, W. S. Cleveland, B. Kleiner, and P. A. Tukey (1983); Mapping Information, by H. T. Fisher (1982); Statistical Graphics, by C. F. Schmid (1983); and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by E. R. Tufte (1983).
Kosslyn et al. (1985) studied this question.