Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

American Scientist Online - A Visionary and a Scoundrel

search

possibly noteworthy
Picture of possibly noteworthy
My Blog
My Profile
My Audience
My Sources
Send Me a Message

sponsored links

possibly noteworthy's topics
Arts
Business
Games
Health and Wellness
Home and Garden
Miscellaneous
  Humor
Current Events
  War on Terrorism
Recreation
Local Information
  Food
Science
Society
  International Relations
  Politics and Law
   Intellectual Property
  Military
Sports
Technology
  Military Technology
  High Tech Developments

support us

Get MemeStreams Stuff!


 
American Scientist Online - A Visionary and a Scoundrel
Topic: Technology 12:34 pm EDT, May  6, 2006

Anyone who has clicked the popular button that commands a spreadsheet computer program to make a chart has experienced the satisfaction of seeing a confusing grid of numbers resolve into crisp bars. It is hard now to imagine how we ever got by without visual tools for understanding masses of data. But of course such devices as the bar graph, the time-series line graph and the pie chart had to be invented. The peculiar man who came up with all three was William Playfair (1759-1823), a Scot who was convinced he could influence Britain's course with visual explanations of macroeconomic trends. Endowed with drafting experience and confident in the power of graphical language, he presented his polemics in a new form: annotated graphs that vividly highlighted trade gaps and the growing national debt.

Although Edward Tufte (author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [1983]) and others have noted Playfair's role as the leading originator of modern statistical graphics, access to his work has heretofore been limited. Finally Playfair can speak for himself: Facsimiles of two of his most important works—the 1801 edition of The Commercial and Political Atlas, and The Statistical Breviary of the same year—have now been published in one small, affordable volume.

American Scientist Online - A Visionary and a Scoundrel



 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics
RSS2.0