It is shocking to realize that even though we live in a three-dimensional world, many of the ways in which we operate are through two-dimensional mediums. Tufte's chapter titled "Escaping Flatland" outlines different design strategies that help communicate 3-D ideas on 2-D surfaces. Further, he works at explaining the amount of information per unit area, something he calls "data density." Tufte also warns not to commit the fallacy of making things overcomplicated and cluttered when trying to represent 3-D spaces. "Pridefully Obvious Presentation" can take away from the value of the data and instead draw too much attention toward the display.
One idea that came to my mind while reading the chapter was the art of mapmaking, and how we still do not have an exact translation of Earth from the 3-D globe to the 2-D map. With over fifty recognized map projections, not one of them successfully depicts our our spherical globe accurately. Each one can focus on making a specific characteristic to scale, but not without distorting some aspects of the overall map. This idea fascinated me ever since I learned about map projections in high school, and this reading made me question the best way to represent data, knowing that information can be skewed and misrepresented. I definitely found it interesting to learn more about representation of 3-D things on a flat surface, and how the same data can be represented and translated in so many different ways that may lead to a totally different understanding.
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