The default table crowds out your data with non-data-ink and locks your data into cells. When data is locked into cells their relationships with other data is harder to see and the reader has to work harder to learn from your table.

When making a table of data consider if, by adjusting spacing and alignment, you can make the columns or rows clear enough as they are without the prison bars. And look for opportunities to remove the visual noise to let your data and the relationships between them shine out.

The data prison is a concept from Edward Tufte. Check out the beautiful Envisioning Information, for more.

The data prison

This simple model for the progression of ideas is sometimes called a dialectic. It has many philosophical roots, but regardless it’s a nice way to think of how ideas, and perhaps society can progress. Something is created or put forward. It has some benefits but gives rise to negative effects and somehow we figure out a resolution as progress. That new solution then becomes the basis for the next step.

In engineering I learned that we progress by the resolution of contradictions. As a very simple example, it’s nice to have a walking stick. But a full-length walking stick is difficult to transport. You want it to be long when you’re walking, and short when you’re traveling with it. So we invent retractable ones. But retractable ones break more easily, so we invent…to be determined.

You also see a similar idea in stories, for example, the story spine.

It’s sometimes erroneously called Hegel’s dialectic, perhaps partly because Hegel’s work was sometimes so difficult to grasp and this is nicely simple.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

The Peter Principle (book) states that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

Someone who is good at their job is likely to get promoted. However, the promoted position will likely require different skills. If they’re good, they may get promoted again, but if not, they will stay. At some point, each employee in an organisation will be incompetent at their position.

I like this short take on the Peter Principle by Tim Harford.

The Peter Principle is a specific case, the case of people, of the Generalised Peter Principle which states that "Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations until it fails." See rule number 1 of indoor games.

The Peter Principle was an observation originally meant as satire. Laurence Peter later wrote a book called The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong.

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The Peter Principle