Semiology of Graphics ─ Diagrams, Networks, Maps

In the absence of adequate education concerning graphics, the power of visual perception is still underappreciated.

"The three dimensions of the image make visual perception our most powerful system of perception and make graphics an especially effective pedagogical tool, which enables us to concretize, from early education on, problems of information, reasoning, and decision making. Thanks to its potential for permutation, modern graphics materializes notions that used to be abstract.

"Graphics gives a visible form to the stages and methods of a study, which facilitates organization of the work. It concretizes the notion of data and highlights problems raised in creating the initial table, problems of pure conception that lie outside of computer usage and are defined by the question, `What should be represented by X?'

Information processing entails comprehensivity. Communication involves simplification.

"Graphics gives a visible form to the notion of `data analysis,' which is more accessible in its graphic incarnation than in its mathematical one. Graphics underscores the fact that a study is `scientific' only when its assertions are confirmed by the rigorous processing of an explicit data table. Without such processing, we are stuck on the level of personal opinion.

"Finally graphics gives a visible form to the notions of discussion, reasoning, and understanding, notions that become precise through the level of relevant questions...[T]he function of precise inventory, highly developed in geographic information systems (GIS)... assumes a role in the general structure of graphics through the notions of types of questions and levels of reading.

"With hindsight, the principal contribution of GRAPHICS seems to me to be in the realm of reasoning, with the precise and constructive visualization of the different stages of a study, even before that study is undertaken."