The flawed genius of William Playfair: the story of the father of statistical graphics

This chapter traces the evolution of statistical graphics starting with its departure from the common noun structure of Cartesian determinism, through William Playfair's revolutionary grammatical shift to graphs as proper nouns, and alights on the modern conception of graph as an active participant in the scientific process of discovery. The ubiquitous availability of data, software, and cheap, high-powered, computing when coupled with the broad acceptance of the ideas in Tukey's 1977 treatise on exploratory data analysis has yielded a fundamental change in the way that the role of statistical graphics is thought of within science-as a dynamic partner and guide to the future rather than as a static monument to the discoveries of the past. We commemorate and illustrate this development while pointing readers to the new tools available and providing some indications of their potential.

William Playfair (1759–1823) pioneered several ideas accepted as fundamental to intelligence today, including compilations of national capabilities and covert economic warfare. Known primarily as a writer on politics and economics and rediscovered in the twentieth century as the main inventor of statistical graphics, his contributions to the intelligence discipline have been largely overlooked because of the secrecy that intelligence demands and because he operated before the formal establishment of Britain’s intelligence organizations.

The invention of statistical graphics is generally, if inaccurately, attributed to William Playfair His initial innovation, along with his subsequent invention of most of the major repertoire of statistical graphics, is in many ways an enigma of the history of science: (1) Given their apparent obviousness, why had these graphic forms not been previously used for plotting statistics? {2} Why was the Cartesian coordinate system, during a century ami a half from its invention, not regularly applied to the kinds of data which Playfair plotted? (3) Why were the symbolic schematics used by Playfair apparently understood by contemporaries without need for prior learning of his 'conventions'? (4) Why did serious scholarly attention to Playfair'$ innovations occur earlier on the continent than in England? (5) Why subsequently have there been waves of popularity and of neglect of Playfair's forms? (S) Why were statistical graphics invented by a political pamphleteer and business adventurer rather than a scholar or scientist? (7) Why did statistical graphics develop first for social data applications rather than for natural or physical science purposes? Addressing these questions may shed light on developments in schematic representation of statistics from the beginnings of cultural numeracy to the present day The primary explanations of the enigma are: (1) the similarities and differences between the purely empirical data graph and diagrammatic representations of pure or applied mathematical functions; (2) the association of utility of pure data graphs with a statistical orientation toward phenomena, Playfaiťs innovations were facilitated by bis association with science during a time when science was particularly hospitable to highly pragmatic endeavors. His innovations were also facilitated by bis marginality with regard to the science of bis contemporaries.

In this paper we trace the evolution of statistical graphics from its departure from the common noun structure of Cartesian determinism, through William Playfair's revolutionary grammatical shift to graphs as proper nouns and alight on the modern conception of graph as an active participant in the scientific process of discovery. The ubiquitous availability of data, software, and cheap, high-powered computing when coupled with the broad acceptance of the ideas in Tukey's 1977 treatise on exploratory data analysis has yielded a fundamental change in the way that the role of statistical graphics is thought of within science — as a dynamic partner and guide to the future rather than as a static monument to the discoveries of the past. We commemorate and illustrate this development while pointing readers to the new tools available and provide some indications of their potential.

In 1786 William Playfair published The commercial and political atlas. Unlike conventional atlases, the volume contained no maps but it did contain charts of a novel and unfamiliar variety. The Atlas contained several tables and 44 charts summarizing trade between England and other countries. The use of tables to present economic data was not new, having been common for more than a century aer John Graunt (1620-1674), who had used them extensively in his Natural and political observations made upon the bills of mortality, and Sir William Petty (1623-1687), who had examined the role of the state in the economy in his Treatise on taxes and contributions; coincidentally, both books were published in 1662. But Playfair’s pictorial representation of economic data was revolutionary.

This introduction provides a brief survey of the evolution of data visualization from its eighteenth-century beginnings, when the Scottish engineer and political scientist William Playfair created the first statistical graphs, to its present-day developments and use in period-related digital humanities projects. The author highlights the growing use of data visualization in major institutional projects, provides a literature review of representative works that employ data visualizations as a methodological tool, and highlights the contribution that this collection makes to digital humanities and the Enlightenment studies. Addressing essential period-related themes—from issues of canonicity, intellectual history, and book trade practices to canonical authors and texts, gender roles, and public sphere dynamics—, this collection also makes a broader argument about the necessity of expanding the very notion of “Enlightenment” not only spatially but also conceptually, by revisiting its tenets in light of new data. When translating the new findings afforded by the digital in suggestive visualizations, we can unveil unforeseen patterns, trends, connections, or networks of influence that could potentially revise existing master narratives about the period and the ideological structures at the core of the Enlightenment.

The Flawed Genius of William Playfair: The Story of the Father of Statistical Graphics

Ian Spence, Colin R. Fenn and Scott Klein go in search of the final resting place of William Playfair, who devised many of the statistical graphics in use today

Despite their utility for analyzing and presenting data, the use of graphs in science is a relatively late development and their emergence through history has been uneven and contested. Modern statistical graphics date largely to the pioneering work of William Playfair in the late eighteenth century. The gradual spread of graphical methods in the early nineteenth century was slowed by various antigraph prejudices, but eventually culminated in their enthusiastic reception during the second half of that century. During the Golden Age of graphics, graphs were used extensively in fields ranging from demography to laboratory physiology. Hailed as the universal language of science, graphs underwent a proliferation of novel formats, and they figured crucially in a number of scientific discoveries. The behavioral scientists of that period – including many of psychology's founding figures – made sophisticated applications of graphical methods, but such methods would be eclipsed by the rise of inferential statistics in the behavioral sciences after 1900.

Despite their utility for analyzing and presenting data, the use of graphs in science is a relatively late development and their emergence through history has been uneven and contested. Modern statistical graphics date largely to the pioneering work of William Playfair in the late eighteenth century. The gradual spread of graphical methods in the early nineteenth century was slowed by various antigraph prejudices, but eventually culminated in their enthusiastic reception during the second half of that century. During the Golden Age of graphics, graphs were used extensively in fields ranging from demography to laboratory physiology. Hailed as the universal language of science, graphs underwent a proliferation of novel formats, and they figured crucially in a number of scientific discoveries. The behavioral scientists of that period – including many of psychology's founding figures – made sophisticated applications of graphical methods, but such methods would be eclipsed by the rise of inferential statistics in the behavioral sciences after 1900.