Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary

William Playfair

Cambridge University Press, 2005 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 195 pages

A scientific revolution began at the end of the 18th century with the creation and popularization of the graphic display of data by Scottish inventor William Playfair, who introduced the line graph, bar chart, and pie chart into statistics. His remarkable Atlas demonstrated how much could be learned if one plotted data graphically and looked for suggestive patterns to provide evidence for pursuing research. In the Statistical Breviary, Playfair invented the pie chart and expanded upon this concept to facilitate the comparison of the resources of European countries. Playfair's work has great relevance to contemporary science, but finding copies of his original versions is very difficult. This re-issuance of two of his classic works, with new explanatory material, allows access to his wisdom for the first time in two centuries. In full color exactly as Playfair hand-colored the original, this volume includes exact duplicates of the third edition of his classic Atlas as well as the Statistical Breviary. An additional feature is the inclusion of annotations and an extensive biography of the remarkable inventor. Howard Wainer is Distinquished Research Scientist at the National Board of Examiners and Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has a Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Princeton University. Professor Wainer is the author of fifteen previous books, most recently, Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures (2005).

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - setnahkt - LibraryThing

A Christmas gift. The introduction is at least as interesting as the book. Playfair more or less invented the use of graphs and charts to display statistical data. He invented the time series line ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - encephalical - LibraryThing

This is famous because of Playfair's role in inventing statistical visualization. If your main interest is in the charts themselves, then any online images or those available in other books, such as ...

About the author

Howard Wainer is Distinguished Research Scientist for the National Board of Medical Examiners and Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of fifteen previous books, most recently, Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and other Vsual Adventures (Princeton University Press, 2005).

Ian Spence is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. His current research includes experimentation in human-computer interaction and visual memory. He is the author of over 100 research articles and monographs.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary
• Author: William Playfair
• Editors: Howard Wainer, Ian Spence
• Contributors: Howard Wainer, Ian Spence
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005
• ISBN: 0521855543, 9780521855549
• Length: 195 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General; Mathematics / Probability & Statistics / General; Science / History; Social Science / Statistics