One of the advantages of having a diverse group of friends is the opportunity to learn about things you might not normally be exposed to. When I was explaining to my friend, Flann Lippincott, who is a graphic designer, about visual representations of social networks, she said “you must know Edward Tufte”. When I admitted that I didn’t she provided me with a copy of “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”.

Given our increased ability to create graphical portrayals, Tufte’s “principles of graphical excellence are more relevant than ever. According to Tufte “excellence in statistical graphs consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency.

Tufte by the Numbers

1. Show the data
2. Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else.
3. Avoid distorting what the data have to say.
4. Present many numbers in a small space.
5. Make large data sets coherent.
6. Encourage the eye to comparedifferent pieces of data.
7. Reveal the data at several levels of detail, from the broad overview to the fine structure.
8. Serve a reasonably clear purpose; descriptive, exploration, tabulation, or decoration.
9. Be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of the data set.
10. Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink and in the smallest space.

Taiwan is the world’s 15th largest commodity importer, and yet, finding information about Taiwan’s trade relationships hasn’t been easy. My primary source, the CIA World Factbook, provided very sketchy details. For instance, the 1996 numbers specified the percentage of trade conducted between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan and the U.S., and Taiwan and the European Union.

One of the aggravating things about the Factbook statistics is that sometimes, instead of detailing the trade relationships with each country, they will aggregate the EU countries or the Asian countries. When this happens I turn to the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbooks for the missing details.

While this works in most cases, Taiwan is an exception. As I leafed through the ‘country’ listings I found no listing between Syria and Tajikistan. This wasn’t a total surprise. In the CIA World Factbook, Taiwan is listed after all the other countries. I checked the back of the Direction of Trade Statistics but still no Taiwan. I looked at the China entries and found China:Mainland, China:Hong Kong, and China:Macao. Still no Taiwan.

The only place that Taiwan was listed was as a part of the total Asian trade number in the summaries of other countries. In order to compile Taiwan trade statistics I needed to back into them by finding where other countries were exporting to. If Singapore exported $8 billion to Taiwan in 2004, I used this as Taiwan’s import number.

I looked for some sort of explanation for this lapse in the Direction of Trade Statistics. I found none. I suppose that, since China considers Taiwan to be a province, the IMF might not wish to acknowledge Taiwan as a sovereign country. However, the 15th largest economy in the world is tough to ignore. There should, perhaps, be a more overt accounting of Taiwan’s contribution to the world economy.