Summary

Historical things and contemporary developments

Visualisations:

• Used to help enable audience to understand large amounts of data
  • E.g. war and death
• Can reduce the time it takes to understand the events, especially with complex data
• Gives audience tools to analyse and compare
• Shows variables in data

Example 1: Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia Graph

• Variables: strength of army
• Brown lines depicts army going to Moscow
• Darker line shows army returns to west
• The thickness of the line represents the amount of people alive in the army
• The second graph underneath shows temperature

Example 2: Florence Nightingale’s Graphs

• Graph exposes the cause of death and death rates amongst the soldiers
• Wedge layout allows the small data to be viewed in the centre
• Allows to view the casualty over time, wedge allows for easier view

Otto Neurath:

• “Educating through the eye”
• ISOTYPE: International System of Typographic Picture Education – serialisation of images
• Using one figure to represent greater quantity
• Industrial approach – Believed they should bring the museum to the people. Multiple versions created to be shipped and displayed
• Vertical access of major parties makes it easier to compare
• Aims to transform society into well informed citizens

Reflection

This lecture explored examples of past successful graphs; Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and Florence Nightingale’s graph. The graph of Napoleon’s invasion is fairly complex with multiple variables such as; time, location, weather and army size. The way in which this graph has been presented is fairly successful as it depicts a clear story with an accurate representation of the data.