This HistDataVis repo is the rmarkdown source for the HistDataVis website to accompany our book, A History of Visualization and Graphic Communication, published in June 2021 by Harvard University Press. We provide an overview of the book, include color images and text that do not appear in the printed edition, and other topics for readers and those interested in this topic.
We thank Matthew Dubins of Donor Science Consulting for his help in making this web site possible.
To function in modern society we must absorb and understand complex data at a breakneck pace. The most efficient way to comprehend and convey complex information is through data-based graphics. This book is an exploration and celebration of the origins and, to some extent, future of graphical methods of data presentation.
It aims to give a comprehensive history of data visualization with an emphasis on the questions:
- How did the graphic depictions of numbers arise?
- Why? What factors led to the key innovations in graphs and diagrams that are commonplace today?
- How did graphic inventions make a difference in understanding natural and social phenomena and communicating results?
Two major themes connect the topics and chronology of this account.
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First, we take the view that the principal innovations over the last 400 years arose in conjunction with a cognitive revolution we call "visual thinking," the idea that some problems and their solutions could be so much more clearly addressed and communicated in visual displays, rather than just words or tables of numbers.
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Second, we try to show how the intellectual, scientific and graphical questions behind these innovations can be better understood by trying to reproduce them today.
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Pages for each chapter include most color figures and their captions. The items in the Learning More section include links and references.
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We provide the R code for our reconstructions of historical graphs, linked in the figure captions on the individual chapter pages.
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A Discussion page will be used to post discussion of topics related to the book.
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Please report any errors in the book on the issues page.