JSM 2004 - Toronto

Abstract #300107

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Activity Number: 319
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Section on Statistical Graphics
Abstract - #300107
Title: A Graphical Legacy of Charles Joseph Minard
Author(s): Howard Wainer*+
Companies: National Board of Medical Examiners
Address: 3750 Market St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104,
Keywords: Minard ; Napoleon ; flow maps ; graphical disasters
Abstract:

Charles Joseph Minard (1781-1870) was a French civil engineer turned economic geographer-cartographer who is known today principally because of a graph he drew of Napoleon's march on Moscow, which was published in the year before his death. But because Minard's graphical work was so much broader than that one plot, the mathematician Howard Gray Funkhouser (1898-1984), in his 1937 history of graphical methods, dubbed Minard "the Playfair of France." Minard's work had substantial effect on the practice of statistical communication. For 21 years, from 1879 until 1899, the Bureau de la Statistique Graphique of the Ministry of Public Works annually published a large format chart-book. This series, l'Album de Statistique Graphique, rivals in sophistication and polish the very best statistical atlases published today. And most of the displays found within it derive very directly from earlier versions designed by Minard. We will discuss two graphs taken from that series. In addition, we will show how even the most magnificent of graphical forms can be misused.

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Revised March 2004