ABSTRACT
A novelist can take ten pages to describe a scene which a film can convey in a single image. Text is a useful vehicle for presenting information, but often pictures can perform the same task more succinctly. Moreover, pictures may correspond more closely to how we actually think (Buzan 1989). Where we are dealing with complex and voluminous data, diagrams can help us to disentangle the threads of our analysis and present results in a coherent and intelligible form. We may not want to accept the claim that ‘you know what you display’ (Miles and Huberman 1984:79); but we can readily recognize the virtues of displaying what we do know in the most effective manner. Text can be a tedious and tiresome way of expressing information which could be encapsulated in a few lines and boxes. This is especially so when we are trying to convey sequentially, through text, information which is more easily grasped simultaneously through diagrams.
