{"id":8757,"date":"2026-10-25T15:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T19:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=8757"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:06:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T19:06:03","slug":"sign-your-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/sign-your-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Sign Your Work!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Edward Tufte walked around the seminar room holding up an original printing of Newton&#8217;s <em>Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica<\/em>, he repeatedly said, &#8220;<strong>Sign Your Work!<\/strong>&#8221;\u00a0 He showed us Newton&#8217;s handwritten signature on the flyleaf of that book.\u00a0 Then, he turned to the back flyleaf and showed the signature of the man who set the type and printed the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNOrHfCmvDUD9goNjvpqgi6U4bC7-eIJJ1Wj29DYz0xwllJMOz43tJ4sMeW2rquUtGCkXRLkJR9YkIGpLQS218JE0BmjbZZp1vciHqwUyeoA&amp;s=10\" alt=\"Image of Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica - Wikipedia\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was from one of Tufte&#8217;s seminars that I attended several decades ago.&nbsp; At the root, Tufte is a statistician, data\/information analyst, and artist.&nbsp; His gift to our world is how to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edwardtufte.com\/book\/the-visual-display-of-quantitative-information\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">visually organize data<\/a> in useful, instantly understood ways. Perhaps he was the father of what we now call &#8220;info graphics.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, if you are interested, that seminar is still relevant and is an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edwardtufte.com\/online-course\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">online course<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time I attended his seminar, he was publishing 3 books, the bottom 3 on this stack.&nbsp; He was such a stickler for detail that he created his own publishing company, Graphics Press, and did all of the finicky typesetting and illustration placement for these <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edwardtufte.com\/books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">books<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.edwardtufte.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/edwar-tufte-course-books.png\" alt=\"Books and Essays\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.6990881458966565;width:559px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those books were invaluable to me as I progressed through 40 years of work at IBM, ending up in what was then their prestigious Research Division.&nbsp; My son. also a data driven geek in the earliest stages of the AI\/SI industry now owns those books and I sometimes remind him &#8220;Sign Your Work.&#8221;  Be proud of what you do and let others know who you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Edward Tufte walked around the seminar room holding up an original printing of Newton&#8217;s Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he repeatedly said, &#8220;Sign Your Work!&#8221;\u00a0 He showed us Newton&#8217;s handwritten signature on the flyleaf of that book.\u00a0 Then, he turned to the back flyleaf and showed the signature of the man who set the type [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-artwork","category-rant","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8759,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}