The culture Quantitative graphics can broadly be seen as

of quantitative serving four goals: power, profit, knowledge

graphicacy
MYRIAM DARU
This paper was first delivered
at the information Design
Conference in December 1986.
transmission and knowledge acquisition.
They do this mostly within the framework
of statistics and thematic cartography.
Traditional statistics served state formation,
as they were a means of controlling the
population of a country. Napoleon was a
great lover of statistics, and during his reign
the first French bureau of statistics was
founded. But when reformers or revolution-
aries make use of statistics, they too are
pursuing power. Maps drawn for Edwin
Chadwick and Charles Booth are examples
of such a political use.
Business statistics and business graphics
in the service of profit were the adaptation of
means developed in a political context.
W.C. Brinton's handbook (1914) was the first
publication to penetrate broadly into the
business community.
The goal of knowledge transmission is
widely illustrated in the pedagogical
literature, in particular in the pioneering
work by Otto Neurath in the twenties and
thirties, when he tried to 'debabelize' the
world. The use of quantitative graphics for
knowledge acquisition has its own historical
continuity which reaches back into the
eighteenth century, but finds its theoretical
development in the social sciences of nine-
teenth century Europe.
Although quantitative graphics have
become part of our visual environment, their Author's address
acceptance is far from general. And when Winselerhof 56
they are used and accepted, their quality is 5625 L Z Eindhoven
The Netherlands
often far from what one would expect from a 40-423814
field which can boast of a rather long trad-
© Myriam Daru 1989
ition. But that tradition and the graphical
habits inherited from the past can in fact

191

Information Design Journal 5:3 (1989), 191–208. DOI 10.1075/idj.5.3.03dar

ISSN 0142–5471 / E-ISSN 1569–979X © John Benjamins Publishing Company
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

stand in the way of good statistical graphics by

present standards of ergonomic, perceptual
and cognitive psychology. It is therefore
important to understand how those traditions
of graphical production and consumption have
evolved.

Graphical production and graphical competence

In his influential book on the visual display of
quantitative information, Edward Tufte (1983)
states:
'Graphical competence demands three different skills:
the substantive, statistical and artistic. Yet now most
graphical work, particularly at news publications, is
under the direction of bit a single expertise: the
artistic/

The situation seems to be changing. As

desktop publishing gives the layman the
power to design, the appearance of data-
graphics in publication could be more and
more determined by the graphic output of
spreadsheet programs. Tufte says further:
'Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and
content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing
typographers to control the content, style, and editing
of prose/
His case his quite well illustrated by the
popularity of Nigel Holmes' work in Time
magazine and elsewhere, whose graphics put a
visual pun at a higher level than the
substantive validity of the illustrated
statistics.
Now computer programmers have neither
the substantive, statistical or graphical
expertise needed for the production of
substantially and statistically adequate and
pleasing data graphics. To allow them to
exercise remote-control on the design of
statistical graphics and the choice of
1 Illustration by Sylvester Brobbel. From the Dutch
newspaper NRC, original c.lOcm wide.
represented variables seems very m u c h more
of a heresy.
Tufte's intention was not to keep graphical
designers from creating quantitative graphics,
but to make them conscious of the sub-
stantive and statistical aspects of their work.
The invasion of inadequate business graphics
programs is in danger of reducing the efforts of
data graphics evangelists to utter futility. The
market for computerized data-junk is wide
open. Obviously the buyers of spreadsheet and
data-base programs will swallow any graphics
module attached to the main body of their
program and consider it a bonus. The evil
should be attacked at its roots: that means

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 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

that software manufacturers should be consumption of quantitative graphics. At the

persuaded that there is profit in data graphics
which are pleasing, ergonomically correct,
substantially true and statistically valid.
But the point is, there are habits of visual
behaviour which are deeply rooted in our
cultural past and which cannot be eradicated
by rational argument. This has been shown by
anthropological research on the representation
of three dimensional objects, but there is
every reason to believe that apart from formal
education there is a great deal of implicit
visual and graphical education (or mis-
education as one chooses to see it) influencing
our tastes and choices in matters of
quantitative graphics. Much of this implicit
education is the result of the use of graphical
designs which have been transmitted from
graphical designer to graphical designer (or
from handbook writer to graphical designer)
since the eighteenth century and have thus
influenced our visual thinking.
moment, even the conditions of production
have not yet attracted a lot of attention,
although the historical sources of information
for it are not as difficult to study as those
concerning diffusion and acceptance. The
history of quantitative graphics ought to be an
integral part of the history of science and
technology. At a point in the evolution of
science, the transformation of knowledge into
visual and graphical representation could be
considered as advanced as the mathematical
thinking tools of the time.
The growing pains of quantitative graphicaey
Quantitative graphics can be considered a
fairly recent addition to the tradition arsenal
of scientific methods and techniques,
although there may be some hesitation about
William Playfaiťs status as the founding
father of quantitative graphics.

Visual thinking
Visual thinking can be seen in at least two
ways. Psychologically with the question: how
do people handle mental images and
perception? And in a social frame of mind,
asking what social economical and scientific
contexts are there in which visual thinking
has been or is encouraged or discouraged?
I will concentrate my reflections on the
second point, although it would be important
to know whether there are categories of
(seeing) people for whom a picture is not
worth a thousand words, or is not unless it
fulfills a certain number of conditions.
Research on the social context of visual think­
ing should look at the production and the 2 One of the early charts by William Playfair
From Tufte (1983), original c.l5cm wide.

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 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
Whether this reflects historical reality is
still a point of discussion which is outside the
scope of this article. What is important here,
is to understand what Playfair was doing. And
to do so, his work should be seen within the
tradition of what was called moral statistics,
which is what we would now call social
statistics. Social statistics are concerned with
the registration and interpretation of social
facts. They imply an extensive machinery for
registration of demographical data, which in
turn implies a mature state organisation.
In the eighteenth century, theoreticians of
society like the Physiocrats in France, Kam-
eralisten in Germany and Moral Economists
in Great Britain were proponents of collecting
data about the population of their country, but
of course they were not the first. Every head of
state interested in winning wars and improv-
ing the national economy, whether Caesar or
Churchill, has tried to know with more or less
exactitude what the state of the country was.
What the eighteenth century brought was a
new way of relating the data to theories of
population and health, of economy and of
state. There was no intention at the time of
collecting this kind of fact to process them for
the benefit and profit of the individual
merchant. When Playfair was processing data
in a graphical way, his intention was to place
the facts in the light of his way of interpreting
the workings of the state and the economy,
and to improve the general understanding of
this complex matter. As such, his work was
important at a very substantial level (in
Tufte's terms). Within the context of his time,
it can be seen as scientific work, and at the
same time as the invention of a new tech-
nique. But the leap from the collection of facts
INF. DES. J. 5 / 3 (1989) 191-208
194
in tables to facts in graphs was not evident to
his contemporaries (is it in fact to our own
contemporaries?). It took a half century after
Playfair before diagrams and graphs gained
some acceptance in the select circles of econ-
omists and statisticians, then again some
twenty years before governments were to use
them in more or less widely circulated pub-
lications. One of the reasons might be that
while Playfair was a practical man, those in
government were mostly educated as lawyers,
apt at using their verbal skills, but less
proficient visually and graphically.
Moral statistics
Moral statistics are the continuation of what
had been during the seventeenth century
Francis Bacon's political arithmetic, later
political arithmetics as practised by John
Graunt and William Petty. Their influence on
the thought of their time has been analyzed by
Glacken (1967). The approach in political
arithmetic was quite pragmatic, and related to
the development of insurance and equity
companies. Life, death and disease were prime
movers behind the application of the methods
of physical science in the study of society. The
term 'moral statistics' seems to have been
coined first by André-Michel Guerry in 1833,
but it is m u c h more associated with the
person of Adolphe Quételet, the Belgian in-
ventor of the statistical concept of the 'average
man'. Astronomers like Halley and Quételet
played an important role in developing
research instruments for the social sciences.
But engineers also played their part in
developing research instrument for the social
sciences. The French engineer Minard is a
well known example.
 MYRIAM DARU . THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

author of 16 thematic maps on France's

population, included the subject in a map
showing the number of inhabitants per person
accused. The darker the department, the
greater the incidence of crime (or rather accus­
ation). The metaphor of enlightened and shady
regions was often explicitly used. The tech­
niques were constantly perfected, and such
maps soon appeared in other countries. Joseph
Fletcher made a series of maps for England in
1849. Guerry was a pioneer in the com­
parative use of such maps in his Atlas of 1864.
Graphic statistics are now considered by
the professional community of statisticians as
a rather marginal activity within their
3 The map by Minard, showing the losses in Napoleon's Russian campaign. scientific community. This has not always
From Tufte (1983), original c.l5cm wide. been so. In the nineteenth century, when stat­
istics were establishing their scientific status,
Quételeťs seminal book published in 1869 the graphic method was considered on equal
quite characteristically develops what he calls terms with other methods. During the period
'physique sociale', social physics. Quételet of the first international statistical congresses,
attempted to relate causally physical and
social phenomena. According to Robinson
(1982), the first map of moral statistics is att­
ributed to Charles Dupin in 1827. It concerns
popular education in France and was drawn as
a chloropleth map. This means quite simply a
thematic map with areas, each area being
uniformly tinted proportionally to density. So
were maps by Balbi and Guerry in 1829, com­
paring statistics of the incidence of crime and
instruction. Quételeťs maps of 1831 on the
other hand, were not chloropleth maps.
Quételets graphical technique was to show
the portrayed phenomena in a continuously
smoothed distribution, using crayon shading.
The relationship between crime and lack of
education was a central preoccupation of 4 Quételeťs 1831 map, showing the distribution of criminality in France and in
moral statistics at that time. D'Angeville, the the Netherlands. From Robinson (1982), original c.l2cm wide.

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 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPKICACY
at the end of the nineteenth century, the
graphic method captured the interest of a
number of highly considered statisticians.
One of them was Georg Mayr whose
Gutachten (report) of 1874 is the first
important methodological document in the
discussion around the scientific status of
statistical graphics. But it was the influence of
statisticians with an international standing
like Quételet in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century which helped established the
graphical method. In fact Quételeťs graphs are
still in use in preventive medicine, in
particular for establishing the normality of
h u m a n mensuration/weight relationship.
Graphical means were seen as a means of
exploring phenomena in a scientific way. In
that light, it is not surprising that such a
scientist as E. Marey was on the one hand one
5 An experiment by Marey as illustrated in his 'Méthode graphique... ' From the
original book (Marey, 1897), c.l2cm wide.
INF. DES. J. 5/3 (1989) 191-208
mm
of the pioneers of kinetic photography, that is
the study of movement by photography, and
on the other hand the designer of a number of
quantitative graphics in statistics, in
particular as used for physics.
His book La méthode graphique dans les
sciences expérimentales (1879) bears witness
to his creativity as an inventor of experiment­
al techniques. Marey's preoccupation with
graphical technique did not in any way lower
his status as a scientist, on the contrary.
Nomography, or the use of graphics for the
solution of complex sets of equations is
another example of a graphical technique with
a high status among engineers. The change
came with the relative importance of draught­
ing in relation to algebra.
Graphicacy and technicity
During the nineteenth century, schooling as a
draughtsman was an essential part of the
engineer's skills. The ability of reading
engineerings drawings was also essential to
industrial production (and is still).
Graphical education was an important asset
to the industrial revolution. At the end of the
eighteenth century, Jonathan Richardson
published a book in which he insisted on the
advantages that aristocracy and church
derived from heaving learnt drawing skills.
Richardson considered that the mechanical
arts had largely progressed within two
generations due to drawing proficiency.
Drawing and technical draughting were not
yet separated at the end of the eighteenth
century as they are now.
In the Netherlands for example, a number
of municipal drawing schools were established
at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

where draughting for engineering purposes approach bringing quantitative graphics to

was taught alongside free hand drawing. The geography. Geographical points, networks and
Royal Dutch Institute of the Sciences, the regions can also be associated with graphically
Letters and the Arts, founded in 1808, expressed quantities. In the beginning of
proposed in 1817 a law towards the teaching graphical statistics as a statistical method, the
of drawing. Its motives were that drawing graphical expression of thematic maps was
schools were essential to forward industry, to part of the discussion.
improve the efficiency of work, to beautify
buildings, and that drawing skills should be
taught to apprentices at a young age.The
popularity of these municipal schools declined
after the middle of the century. In the mean-
time, polytechnical education had taken the
lead as a source of engineers for industry.
Municipal schools went on to provide
technical staff at a lower level. In terms of
graphical education, this meant a split
between the more abstract use of graphics by
high level engineers, and the very practical
draughtsmanship taught at lower levels.

The social use of graphics

As we already saw, the mapping of
quantitative geographical data is related to the
development of quantitative statistics. An
important development is the use of spatial
grids. French sociologists and historians
following the theories of Michel Foucault
speak of 'quadrillage 7 , which could be
translated as 'gridding'. Seen in their
perspective, gridding is a means of mastering
geographical space, and controlling those
occupying it. But the grid is only part of the
story of thematic geography, albeit an
important one. Instead of interpreting
geographical space in terms of large entities, it
concentrates on what is countable and
spatially accountable.
The grid approach is of course not the only
6 A map of Dordrecht showing cases during a cholera epidemic. J A S M Olvers:
Cholera en gemeentebeleid in Dordecht in de negentiende eeuw. Dordecht.
Original double A5.
One of the important areas for application
of quantitative maps was medical topography.
The map illustrating the case of the
Broadstreet Pump as studied by Snow
contributed greatly to his demonstration of
the relationship between fecalised water and
the spread of cholera. His mapping technique
found followers on the continent. For
example, after a particularly murderous
epidemic in the Dutch town of Dordrecht, a
local doctor used it to try and discover which
parts of the town were the most unhealthy.

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 MYRIAM DARU • THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

Thus thematics maps and quantitative group of engineers towards quantitative

graphics were increasingly used to raise social graphics.
consciousness. This approach of quantitative graphics
In the Netherlands, just as anywhere else, differs largely from the way the Avant-Garde
housing reform and public health reform were went on in the twenties and thirties to merge
very m u c h part of the same cluster of political artistic and political imagery for more impact.
issues. Housing surveys were amongst the
first well illustrated social statistics. At the
turn of the century, municipal departments of
housing of building began making serious
surveys of the state of housing. The survey
issued in 1900 by the city of Leyden was pro-
fusely illustrated with quantitative graphics.
In 1901, a cluster of health laws was issued,
amongst them the very important law on
housing, which was the beginning of modern
town planning in the Netherlands. Housing
inspectors were inspectors for the ministry of
Health. One of them, J.H. Faber, published a
small pamphlet called Speaking numbers
(sprekende cijfers), illustrated with quant-
itative graphics. Following his examples, the
Dutch Social-Technical Association of
democratic engineers and architects took the
endless tables published in 1903 by the
Central Bureau of Statistics, and translated
them in a series of shorter tables,
accompanied by coloured bar graphs.
Their intention with this book, published
in 1906, was political. They knew that the
endless rows of number would not reach but a
small circle of specialists. By translating the
data in visually attractive graphics, they
hoped to make the public conscious of the bad
state of housing amongst the lower classes,
and at the same time to do that in the most
objective fashion. This was quite character-
istic of the approach of that association, but it 7 Early Dutch bar chart (1906) showing housing conditions.
also illustrates the attitude of an enlightened Original book c.l5cm wide.

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 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
The Modern Movement and visual thinking
The most outspoken person connected to the
central European Avant-Garde proposing the
use of well-designed and well-conceived
graphics, was Otto Neurath. His ISOTYPE
ideology and methodology should be seen not
only as a part of the history of graphics as
such, but also within the intellectual and
artistic Avant-Garde thinking of
his time. The charts that were
made following his directions
can be placed alongside artistic
expressions such as 'Meine
Sonate in Urlauten' by Kurt
Schwitters, where experimental
graphical and poetical form are
totally integrated one with
another or the works by other
pioneers of modern typography.
It corresponds with the will to
explore all the technical and
intellectual means that are part
of industrialisation and to create
a culture which is intimately
bound to its own age instead of
the continuation of an inherited
tradition. It accepts the cultural
consequences of the mechan-
isation and modernisation and to
mould them in an individual
way, although superficially one
can see the cultural expression of
the avant-garde as Entfremdung
(alienation) and depersonalisat-
8 Employees and workers in the
pictograms by Gerd Arntz for Otto
ion. Neurath was deeply opposed
Neurath. Arntz G & Broos K (1979) to the anti-machine position of
Symbolen voor onderwijs enOswald Spengler and his like
statistiek 1929-1965 Wenen-
Moskou-Den Haag Mart spruyt
and was the author of an anti-
Uitgevers. Amsterdam. Original A4.Spengler pamphlet.
INF. DES. J. 5/3 (1989) 191-208
199
Also important are the philosophical and
political implications of Neurath's action.
Neurath's graphical work was directed
towards popular education, and was part of his
militant engagement in the social-democratic
movement.
His ambition was also essentially inter-
national and universal. This is why he was so
attracted to the 'Mundaneum' idea as put
forward by the Belgian Paul Otlet, who was a
pioneer of universal library classification.
Neurath was also part of the Viennese Circle
marked by philosophers like Wittgenstein and
Carnap, but which attracted personalities of
various professions. Carnap's preoccupation
with the logic of language can also be found in
Neurath's thinking. Although his intellectual
influence within the Viennese Circle and the
Unified Science movement is not to be
doubted - first and foremost as an organiser -
the workings of such intellectual movements
is too much of a synergetic process to be able
to pinpoint exactly the influence of
individuals. What is certain is that Neurath's
ideas have not come through as he would have
wished. The use of pictograms has not
followed his rules for Isotype clients.
Pictograms and their application
The popular diffusion of knowledge concern-
ing complex processes and social statistics has
much less been served by the use of
pictograms than the communication of simple
practical facts, mostly concerning the location
of an object or a facility. And still, although
this kind of pictographical use is quite
generalised, and pictograms are well known as
such, the understanding of their meaning
remains doubtful. Research on the grasping of
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
pictograms by Dutch railway travellers has
revealed a surprisingly low understanding for a
number of commonly used transportation
pictograms.
9 Pictograms for the Dutch Railways (Zwaga 1978). From a Those politcally conscious statisticians took
book on form in design, quoting Zwaga, original c.lOcm wide.
Even though Neurath's principles were
misunderstood, they did find applications,
particularly in the Netherlands. Quite shortly
after first publications on education by the
image, Willem Sandberg (the graphic artist
who later became director of the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam) applied Neurath's
principles to graphical statistics, as did Peter
Alma. But then, the direction followed very
much corresponded with the graphic research
of the Avant-Garde, for example with Bart van
der Leck's work within De Stijl. When
Neurath emigrated to the Netherlands, he
already had some audience. The breakthrough
seemed to come with the integration of
Neurath's graphical principles in the official
Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. The
production of quantitative graphics according
mm
to Neurath's principles was mostly the work
of Gerd Arntz as graphic artist in residence for
the Dutch Foundation for Statistics. Militant
use of quantitative graphics developed during
the Second World War when a group of people
thinking of the reconstruction after the war
got interested in means of using data to raise
popular consciousness about the state of the
country while avoiding the censorship of the
occupant. They formed the kernel of a number
of post-war organisations, in particular an
association for statistics. Graphical statistics
thus became a part of the planning for the
post-war revival of the economy of the
liberated country. As such the innocent
looking publications that illustrated the ins
and outs of Dutch economy and society as an
occupied country had a somewhat subversive
character, which is difficult to detect now.
Neurath's lessons seriously. After the war,
some of them went on to responsible
positions. One of them, fan van Ettinger,
became the director of the Dutch Building
Centre.
The difficulty of getting Neurath's concepts
accepted is well illustrated by the fact that in
the ten years following the war, Bouw, the
journal published by van Ettinger's
organisation, very rarely published
quantitative graphics produced according to
the ISOTYPE rules.
The Central Bureau of Statistics made use
of Arntz's graphics after the war, but its own
draughting division published graphics which
in many cases would not have been approved
by Neurath. One of the graphic designers
working there, Wieland, became head of the
draughting workshop of the Utrecht
University Cartographic department. In his
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

handbook on diagram design (1980), Neurath's

principles appear in one paragraph only,
although he does approve of them.

Quantitative graphics as decision support

As in many other fields, war had an influence
on quantitative graphics. W.C. Brinton had an
early hand in this (see Brinton, 1939). He
explained that quantitative graphics gained
support during the First World War because
they helped summarise a large quantity of
strategic data in a clear and efficient way:
'Probably the feverish demand for prompt and reliable
data during war time did more to stimulate the use of
graphic chart technique than anything that has
happened since 1920. Without realizing what was
happening, I found myself advising the executives of
large corporations, government departments, etc. World
trade was disorganised, and the uncertainty of material
supply required quick analysis of all available data.'

Graphics as a help to analysis and decision-

making took on some importance between
the two world wars. Rationalisation of
management was accompanied by the
visualisation of processes and facts. Work
analysis required the description of complex
movements which was better done by
graphics.The planning of work could better be
done using charts on boards than lengthy lists
and description. At first the charts were 1 0 Charts in the mass media: an exhibit in a 'how to' book on quantitative
graphics (Riggleman 1936).
linear, later network planning made its entry.
After the First World War , businessmen made
an increasing use of visual means for often than not misrepresenting facts. But
advertising and presentation of their products. charts gave more weight to the news.
Although graphs and diagrams have a higher Progress in the diffusion of quantitative
abstraction level than projective and iconic graphics between the World Wars can be seen
graphics, an environment was created where as a combined influence of statistics and the
they could gain a larger acceptance. Mass growing use of graphic means in the mass
circulated media began to use charts, more media. It can also be related to the rise of

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201
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
rationalisation in business practice and the
new decision sciences.
In his introduction to J.R. Riggleman's
Methods for presenting business statistics
(1936 edition), M.C. Rorty states:
'The old facts of business and human experience are
valueless except as they lead to new action, sanely
conceived. ...For the ordinary business man, or even the
busy expert, the typed page must ... have its
supplemental language...This supplemental language is
the language of graphics/
The increasing introduction of quantitative
graphics is correlated by Riggleman to the
statement that any well managed business
enterprise is consciously or inconsciously
dependent upon statistics. The increasing
complexity of business, and the more definite
planning is then said to lead to greater use of
statistics, superseding m u c h guesswork.
According to Riggleman (1936)
'In many up-to-date plants at the present time (1934/39)
executives and managers value their charts as highly as
engineers value their drawings/
Of course it is quite difficult to know whether
there was not a lot of wishful thinking in
Riggleman's words. In any case, his book and
Brinton ; s sold well.
Quantitative graphics and the Modern
Movement in architecture an planning
The move towards more and more rational
control on the environment is not only to be
seen in the world of business economics, but
in town planning and architecture as well.
Through Neurath's contacts with the town
planning avant-garde, in particular with Josef
Frank (an important figure in the Austrian
movement of social housing) his ideas about
exhibition design found their way in the
INF. DES. J. 5/3 (1989) 191-208
202
various presentations of the Congrès
Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne
(CIAM). Although recent research has shown
that there was no actual collaboration of any
importance between Neurath and CIAM, it is
clear that his work was known to the CIAM
members. Those congresses were seminal in
the evolution of modern architecture and
town-planning. For the diffusion of their ideas
they made a shrewd use of media. The visual
presentation of the modern ideology was an
important part of their impact. Simplification
of architectural drawings was implemented,
with use of axonometric projection and much
contrast between lines, colours and back-
ground. Shadows were either absent or black,
avoiding the refinements of the Beaux-Arts
water colouring techniques. The illustrations
were meant to be usable in all kinds of
circumstances, scaled down or printed on bad
paper. Neuraths' and the CIAM's views on
visual communication pointed very much in
the same direction; but then town planning
had already developped a tradition for using
quantitative graphics, one of the most evident
examples being the town planning exhibition
which took place in Berlin in 1910. With the
foundation of the Regional Survey Association
by Patrick Geddes in 1914, the same tradition
got institutional status in England. Just like
Neurath, Geddes was multi-faceted man, and
just like him, he started projects for museums
and for popular education. Geddes also
favoured the use of quantitative graphics.
(Geddes, 1923).
With the move of national legislations
towards procedures involving regional
planning and master plans and various levels
and scales, the operational importance of
thematic mapping increased as did the use of
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

quantitative graphics in preliminary studies. discussion about the scientific legitimacy of

This also meant a need to standardize
graphical expression in order to be able to
compare various planning alternatives as
expressed in maps and charts.
Standards and theories
In the beginning of graphical statistics as a
statistical method, the graphical expression of
thematic maps was part of the general
various paradigms. Although the graphical
method was still part of the mainstream of
statistical science, one of the difficulties was
the standardisation of symbols. Already in
Georg Mayr's Gutachten from 1874, there was
a clearly stated preoccupation with graphical
standards for thematic maps. Not only with
the distribution of quantitative data within
spatial grids, but also with the expression of
flows along physical or symbolic networks.
Although some research was done between

1 1 Georg Mayr's first attempts at a standardisation for 1 2 Recommendations according to the American Joint
graphical statistics. From a copy of the original publication, Committee on Standards for Graphic Presentation. From
c.l2cm wide. Riggleman (1936).

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203
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
the end of the nineteenth century and the
Second World War (see Macdonald-Ross,
1977), the stated rules were mostly intuitive,
even when expressed by a rationalist like
Neurath.
The first large body of rules and standards
for quantitative graphics did not come from
European statisticians, but from American
engineers at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
Standardisation has remained a pre-
occupation, but one of the problems is the
absence of a generally accepted theory of
thematic maps and of quantitative graphics.
One of the difficulties today is that those
disciplines which in the nineteenth century
were very m u c h related - geography and
statistics - both have gone their own way.
In the last two centuries, thematic
cartography has developed a respectable
tradition and counts a number of handbooks,
but it is only with Jacques Bertin's work after
the Second World War that a coherent theory
has been developed which integrates quan-
titative graphics and thematic cartography.
Graphical semiology
What distinguishes Bertin's work from other
cartographic handbooks is that his approach
can be said to be a structuralist one. He
analyses the structure of graphics in terms of
very basic elements, properties and goals and
presents his 'how to' explanations accordingly.
A graphic construction is the translation of
data, and the structure of data is what must
essentially be conveyed by the image. The
structure of data can be expressed in terms of
relationships: things (and the data by which
they are qualified) differ one from another, or
INF. DES. J. 5/3 (1989) 191-208
204
are similar one to another, they can be
ordered, they have a certain proportion one to
another. The graphic language has visual
means, signs on the two dimensional surface
of paper or of a screen, which can express
those relationships. The graphic variables are
the two dimensions of the graphic surface, the
dimensions of the individual signs, their grey
value, grain, colour, orientation and form.
Each of those variables, alone or together, can
more or less adequately translate the statistic-
al properties of the data. For each answer one
seeks from a set of data, whether they be
expressed in the geographical space or not, one
can conceive a procedure for ordering data, a
graphical construction to help the process of
ordering, and a graphical construction to
convey the results. The resulting image must
Gliederungsstufen der
visueiien Variabien
Dimensjonen
der Ebene
Größe
Helligkeitswert
Muster
Farbe
Richtung
Form
2
1 3 The matrix of graphical variables and their properties for
structuring visual perception From the German translation of
Bertin (1967), original c.lOcm wide.
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY
be an instantly perceivable answer to the
question, and should not lead to a lengthy
process of deciphering. To this purpose, Bertin
offers a complete spectrum of techniques,
which totally fill the theoretical matrix he
developed between the two covers of his main
work, Sémiologie graphique.
Bertin's book on graphical semiology was
the result of years of patient collecting and
producing adequate examples as well as of
theoretical ripening. Baptizing this work
graphical semiology brought it in fact very
m u c h in line with what Neurath imagined
with his encyclopedia of unified science. After
all, the theory of signs and systems of signs
was the most important common ground of
the various sciences brought together in the
Unified Science movement in which Neurath
was a moving force. However, Bertňťs
intellectual environment is not so much that
of unified science as that of the older French
tradition unifying history and geography as
sisterly sciences. History and geography are
taught by the same teachers in French lycées.
Thus it is not so surprising that Bertin's
principled and structuralist approach was very
well received amongst the historians of the
pioneering Annales school (named after the
review which publishes their contributions).
Amongst cartographers, the good word was
spread by means of post-graduate courses, and
now the 'Graphique' according to Bertin is
quite rapidly spreading in introductory
courses at undergraduate level. More popular
versions have appeared, first by his assistant -
and now successor - Serge Bonin (1975), later
by followers in the academic community.
Translations have taken a much longer time,
the most accessible being a condensed version
INF. DES. J. 5/3 (1989) 191-208
1313
of his opus magnum. (Bertin, 1981).
Here and there, the possibility of reaching a
larger public has been used, as in the catalogue
and in the exhibition 'Cartes et images de la
Terre' which took place at the Centre
Pompidou in 1980.
Although Bertin's work here and there
suffers of lack of empirical foundation, there is
no doubt that his logical approach to convey­
ing meaning by graphics ought to get a much
larger audience. But the name of the game is
education, rather than logic. Bertin himself is
rather impatient and intolerant towards those
not applying the 'right 7 principles, as can be
seen from the radical way in which he rejects
them in his books, in the hope of forcing new
insights against mentalities with strong roots
in the past.
1 4 One of Bertin's attempts to teach graphicacy to makers and readers of
thematic maps. From Bertin (1981), original c.20cm wide.
Educating towards quantitative graphicacy
Educating towards quantitative graphicacy is a
difficult enterprise. In an article published in
1980 in IDJ, Albert Biderman has already
likened the bias against graphics in text to the
discrimination suffered by women in society.
More directly, the mathematisation of
 MYRIAM DARU • THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

engineering has been seen as a sexist enter- phenomenon in our daily lives, real
prise. (One could perhaps say: something is quantitative graphicacy is at a low level. By
sexist if it is sexist in its consequences). As a real quantitative graphicacy, I mean being able
matter of fact, the question is probably more to see the data through the bars. By these
one of elitism as such than one of sexism. somewhat cryptic terms I mean being able to
Also the opposition between graphical see what information a graph conveys, and if a
education and mathematical education is graph does not convey the information it
inadequate. After all, mathematics and pretends to be, being able to say why. If the
drawing were both part of the education of the graph is correct in terms of statistics and
British gentleman during the eighteenth graphics, quantitative graphicacy implies
century and there is no reason why they being able to answer a number of questions
should be segregated one from another in a using the graph. At a higher level it means to
tale of two cultures. This segregation has not be able to name means for producing a correct
spontaneously come about, it has been the result. And at a still higher level, being able to
consequence of a mathematisation of create a chart in order to elicit answers.
engineering, thoroughly analyzed by Sally
Hacker (1983).
Mathematisation had been part of the
introduction of a school culture in engineer-
ing, when apprenticeship was being replaced
by formal studies. Graphics began to be
associated with manual training, while math-
ematics and physical science were to train the
mind. The curricula were streamlined towards
this image. While ranking at first equal to
mathematics, physics and chemistry in
curricula, graphics emerged as a special field
called drafting, and became a main object of
study for less well trained people. At this
point, women entered the drafting occupation,
but already at the end of the nineteenth 15 There is practically no ad for computers without either a
bar or a pie chart. Origin unknown, size c.l7cm wide.
century many of the jobs created (like copiers)
had fallen victim to mechanisation.
Thus we see a parallel evolution in science Now with the various computer programs
and engineering towards mathematisation and offered on the market, producing a graph is at
the degradation of graphics as part of tasks everyone's fingertips: but not automatically a
with a lesser status. graph which testifies to quantitative
graphicacy. To do so implies being able to
Mathematisation and the decline of graphics
choose the correct format of graph for the data
Although quantitative graphics are a pervasive

INF. DES. J. 5 / 3 (1989) 191–208

Ell
 MYRIAM DARU ■ THE CULTURE OF QUANTITATIVE GRAPHICACY

to be represented. If the programs were what In the field of thematic cartography,

they should be, a complete toolbox for
producing the right kind of graphs for the right
kind of data, it would mean being able to
produce the best graph for the data to be
represented. The best would be that which
conveys best the intentions of the user, given
a correct statistical handling of the data by
h i m or her.
Conclusion
Although quantitative graphics are a pervasive
phenomenon in our daily lives, their use has
developed along lines which are not rational,
but connected to historical evolution.
Real quantitative graphicacy is still un-
common.
quantitative graphicacy is badly needed. But
the skills needed for reading, interpreting and
producing maps imply more than quantitative
graphicacy alone. They encompass relation-
ships between the map and the spatial
environment. It is thus not surprising that
new insights on quantitative graphics would
come from someone mastering thematic map-
making.
Better insights on quantitative graphicacy
are in demand. The consequence of
quantitative graphicacy would probably lead
to a rejection of what a charting program has
to offer in spite of the superficial
attractiveness of its graphical frills.

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