tufte-mapped-pictureslisted

# Mapped Pictures: Images as Evidence and Explanation ## Overview A representational image shows what something looks like; a mapped picture lets a viewer measure it, place it, compare it, and test the claim being made about it. Tufte's argument in *Beautiful Evidence* is that explanatory, journalistic, and scientific images should nearly always be mapped — fitted with scales, a coordinate grid, labels, and overlays — and that a mapping is itself a claim, so it must be held to the same standards of credibility as any explanation. The chapter's two halves are equally important: how to map an image (scale, grid, labels), and how to tell a credible mapping from a crank one (explanatory tightness, falsifiability, flatland-vs-spaceland). The current skill title drops "and Explanation"; do not — the second half is where most real failures live. > "Mapped pictures combine representational images with scales, diagrams, overlays, numbers, words, images." — Tufte, *Beautiful Evidence*, p. 13 **Chapter and citation note.** "Mapped Pictures: Images as Evidence and Explanation" runs printed **pp. 12–45**. Page citations throughout are printed page numbers. Four items marked *(pp. 112–121)* come from the adjacent "Words, Numbers, Images — Together" chapter; they are flagged where they occur because they serve this thesis more directly than any other. **Provenance across the canon.** The idea does not originate here. *Visual Explanations* ch. 1 supplies the direct ancestor — direct lab