New Book: “The Minard System” (Fall 2018)

This is a catalog of all statistical visualizations by Charles-Joseph Minard (1781-1870), who is considered one of the most important …

Data Trails: “The Tree of Virtuous Behavior” (1608)

I stumbled upon this severe beauty of a tree diagram in the Beinecke digital collections and was immediately thrilled about this hidden gem from 1608. Then I never came around to really studying it — until just now…

Data Trails: “Notes on Matters Affecting the Health” (1858)

Visualising data on health and mortality has a most up-to-date ring to it, as if it had required the rise of big data and computational tools for something as intricate as visual health statistics to develop. Surprisingly, however, already the mid-19th century saw a huge upsurge…

Data Trails: “The Power of Trees” (1855)

This beauty of a diagram is considered to be the first organisational chart ever. The inception of the railways in the mid-19th century must have been a mind-blowing change process…

Data Trails: “81 Years of Graphical Excellence” (1874)

81 years of budget data and various categories in three diagrams – the United States Fiscal Chart from the 1870 US census atlas is a real blockbuster in the history of data visualisation. Today, experts from the field like to joke that data visualisation serves as a gateway drug to statistics…

Inspiration: Interactive Network Graph from MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City is a fascinating brand name in the museum world. Since it …