Analysis from the Bottom Up

Came across an article in the New York Times describing the latest occurrence in the growing trend of private consumer information being inadvertently or purposely exposed on the internet. Now, due to obvious concerns about identity theft, millions of government dollars will have to be spent to monitor all these folks’ credit reports. Even worse than that though, is how many places this database has been copied which are completely outside of the agency’s control.

The Agriculture Department said that its review of the database shows that between 100,000 and 150,000 people could be at risk.

Privacy advocates say the actions by the agencies may not be enough. The database is more than two decades old, and is used by many federal and state agencies, by researchers, by journalists and by other private citizens to track government spending. Thousands of copies of the database exist.

Dr. Tufte has posted on his blog a letter he wrote to the Executive Editor of the Washington Post, following their site’s recent redesign. In short, he delivers the Editor the following excellent instructions to be handed off to their web designer:

Make our webpage straightforward, and if possible elegant–and, no matter what, increase the amount of news available within the immediate eyespan of the viewer on the homepage. We want more of what we do well immediately visible. People come to our website for the news, not for the interface.

Edward Tufte
March 29 2007

Sage advice any site designer should heed. Click over to Dr. Tufte’s site to join in the discussion about the Post’s redesign.

Manoj Jasra posted a very useful web analytic solution comparison on his blog recently. If you are using, or are considering using, any kind of web analytic package on your site, his collection of links is definitely worth browsing through.

The Register UK reports on new research coming out of Australia which recommends doing away with PowerPoint presentations as a means to communicate information.

Anyone who’s been a victim of “death by PowerPoint” - that glazed and distant feeling that overwhelms you when some sales droid starts their presentation - will be reassured by Aussie researchers who’ve discovered biological reasons for the feeling.

Humans just don’t like absorbing information verbally and visually at the same time - one or the other is fine but not both simultaneously.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia found the brain is limited in the amount of information it can absorb - and presenting the same information in visual and verbal form - like reading from a typical PowerPoint slide - overloads this part of memory and makes absorbing information more difficult.

Professor Sweller said: “The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched.

“It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.”

The theory of “cognitive load theory” suggest the memory can deal with two or three tasks for a period of a few seconds - any more than that and information starts to get lost.

Read the abstract of Professor Sweller’s work.