Overall I think I best understood the motivating principle behind “to clarify, add detail.” I related it to the idea of “trusting the reader,” especially with Tufte’s paragraph at the end of the section detailing all the ways people parse out an informationally dense image. Sometimes in writing people want to clarify by being super overt, but that shows a lack of faith in the reader. Instead, efficient but subtle methods should be taken to relay information using the known ways that people tend to extract information from a busy scene.

Two examples that I found confusing were the graph about copper conductivity, and the Tokyo population maps. I thought the labeling on the copper graph cluttered the information too much, it was an important part of the graph of course but the lines for the actual graph and the lines to label those made it very hard to follow. I liked the Tokyo population maps, but Tufte said residents are still able to pick out their own square. I don’t see how someone could do this without more information on the map helping them pick out where they live. I still think it’s a good map, but for an individual I don’t think this is the best example of micro/macro design.

While I was glad to have some takeaways from this chapter, I think I struggle with Tufte readings because of his insistence on only using existing examples. I would have liked to see something from the ground up: with a given data set/audience/goal how he would use the tools of the chapter to create a display. I think there are so many intricacies to the examples he puts forth, that he doesn’t really talk about, that make them not feel like a great way for me to learn.