Title: Graphic Discovery
Subtitle: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures
First published: October 26, 2004
Description: "In an illustrated story of invention and inventor that mixes science and politics, intrigue and scandal, revolution and shopping, Howard Wainer validates Thoreau's observation that circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk." "The story really begins with the eighteenth-century origins of the art, logic, and methods of data display, which emerged, full-grown, in William Playfair's landmark 1786 trade atlas of England and Wales. The remarkable Scot singlehandedly popularized the atheoretical plotting of data to reveal suggestive patterns - an achievement that foretold the graphic explosion of the nineteenth century, with atlases published across the observational sciences as the language of science moved from words to pictures."--Jacket.
Subjects: Graphic methods, Mathematical statistics, History, Economists, biography, Scotland, biography, Statistiek, Grafische voorstellingen, Statistics, Data Display, Computer Graphics
People: William Playfair (1759-1823)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: QA276.3 .W29 2005