Table Of Content

VISIBLE NUMBERS: ESSAYS ON THE HISTORY OF STATISTICAL GRAPHICS ashgate studies in technical communication, rhetoric, and culture Series Editor: Miles A. Kimball, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA this series promotes innovative, interdisciplinary research in the theory and practice of technical communication, broadly conceived as including business, scientific, and health communication. Technical communication has an extensive impact on our world and our lives, yet the venues for long-format research in the field are few. This series serves as an outlet for scholars engaged with the theoretical, practical, rhetorical, and cultural implications of the field. Also published in the series Computer Games and Technical Communication Critical Methods and Applications at the Intersection Edited by Jennifer deWinter and Ryan M. Moeller Visible Numbers: essays on the history of statistical Graphics Edited by MilEs A. KiMbAll Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA ChARlEs KosTElniCK Iowa State University, USA Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Miles A. Kimball and Charles Kostelnick 2016 All rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Miles A. Kimball and Charles Kostelnick have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the british library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Visible numbers : essays on the history of statistical graphics / edited by Miles A. Kimball and Charles Kostelnick. pages cm. -- (Ashgate studies in technical communication, rhetoric, and culture) includes bibliographical references and index. isb7.n2 978-1-4094-4875-4 (hardcover) 1. Mathematical statistics--Graphic methods. 2. statistics--Graphic methods. 3. Charts, diagrams, etc. 4. Visualization--Technique. 5. in- formation visualization. i. Kimball, Miles A., editor. ii. Kostelnick, Charles, editor. QA276.3.V57 2016 519.5--dc23 2015024492 isb7.n2 9781409448754 (hbk) contents List of Figures vii List of Tables xv Acknowledgments xvii Notes on Contributors xix introduction 1 Charles Kostelnick and Miles Kimball ParT I VIsuaLIzIng BoDIes: HeaLTDHI, DIsease, eVoLuTIon 1 Visualizing Evolution and Development: The Rise of Geometric morphometrics 19 Alan G. Gross 2 Florence nightingale’s statistical Table for hospitals: A Work of Utility and Art 43 Lee E. Brasseur 3 Visualizing Public health Risks: Graphical Representations of smallpox in the seventeenth, Eighteenth, and nineteenth Centuries 61 Candice A. Welhausen and Rebecca E. Burnett ParT II VIsuaLIzIng naTIons: MoraLITy, War, naTIonaLIsM 4 Joseph Fletcher, Thematic Maps, slavery, and the Worst Places to live in the U.K. and the U.s. 83 Robert Cook and Howard Wainer 5 7lin.2novation and inertia in Atmospheric and Census Cartography in nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America 107 Mark Monmonier 6 Mountains of Wealth, Rivers of Commerce: Michael G. Mulhall’s Graphics and the imperial Gaze 127 Miles A. Kimball vi Visible Numbers: Essays on the History of Statistical Graphics 7 “a scheme of cross-roads, orderly and mad”: british trench maps of the First World War 153 Marguerite Helmers ParT III exxaaMInIng VIsIBLe nuMBers: ForMs, MeTHoDs, HIsTorIograPHIes 8 7m.2osaics, culture, and rhetorical resiliency: the convoluted Genealogy of a Data Display Genre 177 Charles Kostelnick 9 t7.h2e twentieth-century computer Graphics revolution in statistics 207 Dianne Cook 10 The Milestones Project: A Database for the history of Data Visualization 219 Michael Friendly, Matthew Sigal, and Derek Harnanansingh 11 7a.2nnotated bibliography of scholarship on the history of Data Graphics 235 Kevin Van Winkle Works Cited 261 Index 285 list of figures 1.1 A Cartesian grid applied successively between Didion and Orthagoriscus mola 21 1.2 Conjectural fossil horse’s heads in grids compared with actual fossils 22 1.3 Dasyurus into Phalanger 24 1.4 Growth profile of the hermit crab. Growth-gradients along the body of male and female hermit-crabs (Euparugus prideauxi [Parugus prideaux leach 1815]). The male gradients are marked by solid lines; the female, by diagonal filler. The numbers give percentage increases of appendage length for a given percentage increase of body length, marked as dotted line 25 1.5 Relative growth of the chela (claw) in the prawn Palaemon malcomsoni [now Macrobrachium malcomsonii or monsoon river prawn]. logorithmic plotting 27 1.6 Above: Golofa imperialis and Golofa caecum [the name of this beetle is not present in contemporary taxonomies]. below: two specimens of Golofa porteri 27 1.7 The effect of rate-genes on eye-pigmentation in Gammarus chevreauxi 28 1.8 o7.r2dinates mark human chest-girths as a percentage of stature; the abscissa gives the age in years 28 1.9 Full face of the british Museum Wax Death Mask fitted with the facial outlines of the Wilkinson head 31 1.10 Profile of the british Museum Wax Death Mask fitted with the profile and the average flesh allowance of the Wilkinson head 31 1.11 Median saggital section of head showing bone, embalmed head, ordinary flesh allowance 32 1.12 Final Comparison of the Wilkinson head with Masks and busts 33 1.13 Three views of a human hemi-mandible, age 1 year 36 1.14 7s.c2attergram comparing the development of the mandible in humans and chimpanzees 37 1.15 The development of the chimpanzee mandible from gestation week 18 to dental stage (Ds) 2 39 1.16 s7.c2reenshot from video of the development of the human mandible, front and side view 39 1.17 Thin-plate splines of the dolphin skull and the scattergrams on which they are based. RW = relative warp analysis, a form of viii Visible Numbers: Essays on the History of Statistical Graphics principle component analysis “conducted in order to summarize the variation in shape among the specimens in the sample” (Amaral et al. 40). in each spline, landmarks are represented by open circles 40 1.18 Phenogram of three dolphin species based on geometric morphometrics 40 2.1 7h.o2spital General statistical Form designed by nightingale 45 2.2 Close-up, hospital General statistical Form designed by nightingale 46 3.1 Mummified body of Ramses V, believed to have died from smallpox in 1157 bc 63 3.2 7l.i2ne graph that appeared in the 1838 British Medical Almanack that traces daily smallpox deaths over a 17-day period 71 3.3 Register of the small-pox in Chester, 1778 (haygarth (1801) 75 3.4 s7.m2allpox outbreak in 1893 in Muncie, indiana 76 3.5 s7.m2allpox outbreak in Western Australia 77 4.1 Joseph Fletcher’s “ignorance in England and Wales” (“Moral,” 1849) 89 4.2 Joseph Fletcher’s “Crime in England and Wales” (“Moral,” 1849) 89 4.3 John snow’s 1855 map showing the location of each death during the cholera epidemic that struck central london in september of 1854. snow deduced the cause of the epidemic from their proximity to the broad street water pump 92 4.4 A scatterplot of ignorance versus crime for the nineteenth-century data vividly shows the positive relation that Fletcher discusses. it also highlights the unusual character of the county of Middlesex (home of greater london), as well as the similarity of the Celtic counties (Monmouth, north and south Wales) 99 4.5 A scatterplot of ignorance versus crime using modern data maintains the overall historical relationship between the variables, though the relationship does not hold for most individual counties 99 4.6 A scatterplot of ignorance for the two time periods shows a remarkable shift; the least ignorant counties in the nineteenth century tend to be the most ignorant now and vice versa 101 4.7 A scatterplot of crime for the two time periods shows only a very modest relationship between the level of criminality in a county over the two time periods depicted. The principal exception to this lack of trend is the county of Middlesex 101 4.8 7s.t2em-and-leaf plot of free and slave states’ ranking on Angoff and Mencken “Worst American states” 102 List of Figures ix 4.9 setem-and-leaf plot of free and slave states’ ranking on updated worst American states using modern data 102 4.10 secatterplot of relationship between 1850 proportion of population that is slave and 2009 nAEP reading scores 104 4.11 secatterplot of relationship between 1850 proportion of population that is slave and 2010 per capita income 104 4.12 escatterplot of relationship between 1850 proportion of population that is slave and 2009 death rate 105 5.1 leithographed copy of the “Map of Virginia, showing the distribution of its slave population from the census of 1860,” published in Washington, DC, in 1861 by henry s. Graham 111 5.2 Joseph Fletcher’s 1849 choropleth map of the “Dispersion of population in england & Wales” was one of several choropleth maps accompanying his article “moral and educational statistics of England and Wales” 112 5.3 Excerpt and key from Francis A. Walker’s 1874 “Map showing the illiteracy of the adult white male population, compiled from returns of population at the Ninth census of the United states, 1870” 114 5.4 Walker’s Statistical Atlas included this centrographic map, devised by James hilgard to describe the westward movement of the center of U.s. population 114 5.5 Wilhelm Trabert’s 1905 reconstruction of the weather map described by brandes in 1819 116 5.6 U.s. surgeon-General’s office, eastern half of the “hyetal or Rain chart: mean Distribution of precipitation for the Winter” 117 5.7 sepecimen station model included with the daily weather 7.2 maps issued by the U.s. Weather bureau, later the national Weather service 118 5.8 belack-and-white image of brewer and suchan’s magnitude map of county populations, appropriately portrayed with graduated squares 121 5.9 belack-and-white image of brewer and suchan’s choropleth map of county populations 121 5.10 secatterplot matrix for exploring relationships among three variables includes a map and a movable brush for selecting areas 123 5.11 An array of maps on noAA’s national snow Analyses website serves as both a menu and a device for comparative visual analysis 125 5.12 Three-month outlook map exemplifies the graphic simplicity of longer-range forecast maps (national oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) 125