The Playfair enigma:
the development of the
schematic representation
of statistics
ALBERT D BIDERMAN
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 represent­
ations 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 hospit­
able to highly pragmatic endeavors. His
innovations were also facilitated by bis
marginality with regard to the science of
bis contemporaries.
Information Design Journal 6:1 (1990), 3–25. DOI 10.1075/idj.6. l.01bid
ISSN 0142–5471 / E-ISSN 1569–979X © John Benjamins Publishing Company
My work on this paper began for a present­
ation to a joint session of the Statistics and
Social Sciences Sections of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. 1
My discussion of T h e contemporary
revolution of graphics in statistics and the
social sciences' dealt with an earlier time
when the word 'statistics' meant pretty
much neither more nor less than 'social
science' now does. We are accustomed to
think of intellectual diffusion as taking place
from the physical and natural sciences to the
social sciences. But the transformation of
statistics from a social science to a field
embracing empirical data from any realm of
nature involved many instances of reverse
transfusion. Statistical data graphs are one
instance of the widespread application out­
side the social science realm of innovations
that arose to meet typical problems of deal­
ing with social science data.
William Playfair (1759-1823) has been
widely, albeit inaccurately, credited with in­
venting the presentation of statistical data
by graphs, beginning with the publication in
1786 of his The commercial and political
atlas.2 There are many remarkable aspects to
Playfair's innovations.
The first is the degree to which statistical
graphs sprang, as it were, full-blown from his
Author's address
Research Professor of
Justice, Law and Society
American University
Washington DC 20016
USA
© Albert D Biderman 1990
1 William Playfair. The commercial and political atlas...
Title page. London, 1786
3
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

2 4
William Playfair. William
The commercial Playfair. The
and political commercial
atlas... Chart of and political
the exports and atlas...
balance in our Chart of the
favour and revenue
interest of the collected
national debt. by the
London, 1786 Commissioners
of Excise and
Revenue of
Ireland.
London, 1786

5 William
Playfair. The
commercial
3 and political
William Playfair. atlas... Chart
The commercial representing
and political the reduction
atlas... Chart of of the national
the National debt by the
debt London sinking fund.
1786 London. 1786

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

4
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

drafting instruments. Not only was he

(almost) the first (as far as I now know) 3 to
publish purely empirical social statistics in
graph form, he conceived a great many of all
currently popular forms of statistical graphs
and applied them to a large variety of data
problems. Playfair certainly was the originator
of the chartbook of national economic and
social indicators. His 1786 Atlas (Figure 1)
(which notably included statistical charts only
and no maps) consisted mostly of time series,
presented both as line-charts (in all instances,
time was the horizontal axis and amounts
measured in pounds sterling the vertical) 4 6 William Playfair. The commercial and political atlas...
(Figure 2) and surface charts (Figure 3). He Total granted for services from the year 1722 to 1785. London 1786
used both black and white and color. The
differences in appearance between some of
Playfair's 1786 charts and some that might be
prepared in the present day are slight.
The techniques and devices of graphing
employed by Playfair in his first work are in
many ways more professional than one finds
in many present-day works - his use of hach-
ures and solids, grids with major and minor
divisions (Figure 4), surface charts (Figure 5),
consistent schemes of color coding (Figures 2,
4 8k 5), historical period and event reference
markings (Figure 6) in his time series - much
of the useful repertoire of graphs was well 7 William Playfair. The commercial and political atlas... Probable
increase in interest during payment of the new debt. London. 1786
worked-out and quite quickly as a spare-time
undertaking by Playfair.
He used charts in his very first volume for
analytic as well as straight presentational
purposes; for example, areas of the sums and
differences of variables being significant
objects of depiction, as well as the values of
the individual variables themselves (Figure 4).
He used smoothed continuous lines and
broken-line forms. He graphed hypothetical as
well as actual values (Figures 6 & 7) - he was
as much interested in time series projection as
depiction (Figure 7). One of the 44 charts in
the first Playfair Atlas was the first known 8 William Playfair. The commercial and political atlas...
statistical bar chart (Figure 8) - a form he used Exports and imports of Scotland. London, 1786

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

5
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

10
William Playfair. apologetically because he lacked time series
Statistical data for the trade of Scotland and could pre-
breviary...
Statistical chart sent cross-sectional categorical data only. In a
of Hindoostan subsequent work, The Statistical Breviary...
with the great
(1801) (Figures 9, 10 & 11), he innovated an
and inferior
divisions. additional form of the contemporary
London, 1801 repertoire, the circle graph and the pie chart.
Here, he used relative areas representing geo-
graphical regions, and connected ordinates
representing, respectively, population and
revenues, to depict the tax burdens of the
countries of Europe as functions of land and
population.
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
11
Not only was Playfair credited with being William
the first person (with the exception, at least, of Playfair.
Statistical
Crome [1782, 1785] and, see below, of
breviary...
Huygens [Boyer, 1947] and the ancient Incas Statistical
[Locke, 1923]) to publish graphs of concrete chart shewing
the extent of
social data, he was for a considerable period of the population
time the only one (more or less) to do so. It and revenues of
took 15 years before anyone (who has come to the principal
nations.
my attention) emulated the graphic applicat- London, 1801
ions Playfair published in 1786. It was almost
50 years after Playfair's first Atlas before stat-
istical graphs were used with any regularity,
and then primarily on the Continent rather
than in England. It was only during the latter
phases of the Statistical Movement in Great
Britain that its members made regular use of
statistical graphs, and then seemingly by
reverse diffusion from the Continent
(Funkhouser, 1937; Tilling, 1975).
Matching the apparent ease with which
Playfair developed the basic repertoire of the
statistical graph is the apparent ease with
which his unprecedented means for presenting
statistical data were understood and appreciat-
ed by audiences. His Atlas in its original and
several subsequent editions enjoyed consider-
able popularity. (Funkhouser & Walker, 1935;
Funkhouser 1937). He achieved considerable
success in his effort to present complex

6
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

elaboration of the form) are the only ones that

Playfair acknowledged as a precedent of his
forms, and that only with regard to his bar
chart. Priestley's biographical and historical
charts also were extremely popular and went
through many editions, during a period of over
a half-century. (Priestley's biographical charts,
incidentally, illustrate another interesting and
lasting 'natural graph convention' - he used
dotted lines to indicate missing data where he
could not precisely fix either a birth or death
date for an historical figure).
Why Priestley in the late eighteenth cent­
ury felt he had to go through elaborate just­
12 ification for using a line to represent time may 13
James Priestley. statistics 'to make them understandable by / Newton.
A specimen of a also strike us as enigmatic in view of the fact Philosophae
persons of great rank, or active business/
chart of that a time dimension as an abscissa had long naturalis
biography. without their need to expend 'the fatigue or principia
figured in kinematic diagrams. Newton's
London 1769 trouble of studying the particulars' [Atlas, mathematica
(1785 edn) Principia affords an example (Figure 13). But Lemma III.
1786, p6). Unlike many abstract sign systems,
there are two important differences between London, 1687
the basic graph forms and applications used by
how Priestley and
Playfair do not appear to have depended for
Playfair were treat­
their appreciation upon gradual crescive
ing time and the
developments of the culture, elaborated step
treatment of time
by step. Nor, as is the case with other
in diagrammatic
complex sign systems of individual invention,
forms that were
did people have to school themselves
previously com­
elaborately to appreciate the signification of
mon. First, in kine­
Playfaiťs systems. His graphs were apparently
matic diagrams, the
completely unconventional, but perfectly and
representation of
immediately acceptable as conventions for
time on the spatial
conveying the information.
plane of the dia­
gram follows
directly from the
VISUAL SPATIAL METAPHORS equation of time
with the successive
It is notable that only two decades before positions in space
Playfaiťs Atlas, J B Priestley (1765) felt it nec­ of a moving object
essary to fill several pages in order to justify as over time. The rep­
a natural and reasonable procedure represent­ resentation of space
ing time by a line in his graphic, historical, and time in graphs
and biographical charts. These charts of is less an intellect­
Priestley's (Figure 12 shows Priestley's 1769 ual step than

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

7
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

1 4 Rendition of representations such as those of Priestley in

C Huygens's
(1669)
which a variable other than space, or objects
interpolated in space, are represented by spatial dimensions
curve fitted to of a diagram,- or those, such as Playfaiťs bar
Gr aunt's London
mortality data.
chart of the revenues and expenses of
C B Boyer, 1947 Scotland, in which neither space nor time
figures as a variable. For Playfair, time
15 assumed the position on which a merchant
Robert Plot. might successively stack his daily receipts of
Portion of a
chart of piles of money (see below). Playfair did event­
observations of ually use line lengths to represent quantities
the history of which did not fit as nice a metaphor as this -
the weather,
1685 for example, human populations, which ordin­
arily do not get to be stacked in neat piles.
But, presumably, no great intellectual innovat­
ion is represented here. Such representations
must have occurred innumerable times over
time immemorial in connection with the
keeping of serial chronological records by even
pre-literates. The keeping of daily (or other
periodic) counts with tally marks generates
precisely such a record. A primitive tally mark
record, indeed, can have precisely the elegant
properties of the grouped unit-symbol bar
graph advocated by Brinton (1914) and
Neurath(1936).
My colleagues who are interested in the
history of statistical graphs react with some
excitement to discovering instances prior to
Playfair when the spatial metaphor was ap­
plied to the representation of purely empirical
quantitative data. 6 For example, I learned by
correspondence with S Stigler that he had
been informed (by correspondence with C
Eisenhart) that Christiaan Huygens (Figure 14)
had graphed Graunťs data on London mortal­
ity (see Boyer, 1947) and that someone fitting­
ly named Robert Plot (1685) had published,
mirabile visu, a graphic chart of daily baro­
metric observations for the year 1684 (Figure
15). But these, apparently, are noteworthy as
isolated and rare departures. The use of Quipu
knot-records by the ancient (and otherwise

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

8
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

pre-literate) Incas for demographic and
economic data (Locke, 1923) is one of several
examples from outside of the stream of
European cultural development.
The resistance to the use of lineal ex-
tension, or other graphic devices, to represent
quantities of phenomena that were not them-
selves spatial may strike us as rigid literal-
mindedness. Playfair was aware that the heart
of his invention was the recognition that
anything that could be expressed in numbers
could be represented as well by lines. He
acknowledged that this was a lesson taught
him by his brother John (Playfair, 1807: xvi).
But these uses of 'lineal arithmetic' he learned
in his boyhood were applications where a rel-
atively literal metaphor was applicable. This
included the instructive exercise to which his
brother put him at a young age - keeping a
would represent a day, and its height wrould be prop-
ortioned to the receipts of that day; so that by this plain
operation, time, proportion, and amount, would all be
physically combined.
Lineal arithmetic then, it may be averred, is nothing
more than those piles of guineas represented on paper,
and on a small scale in which an inch (suppose) rep-
resents the thickness of five millions of guineas,... as
much information may be obtained in five minutes as
would require whole days to imprint on the
memory...by a table of figures. (Playfair, 1801: xi-xii).
SCHOLASTIC NOMINALISM
1 6 J Kepler.
The resistance to the spatial representation of Harmonie mundi
non-spatial quantities in early modern science Table showing
is notable in light of ancient examples such as the motion of
planets using the
those: (a) in pharmacological work by follow- forms of musical
ers of Galen (who used the analogy of linear notation. 1619

register over time of the readings of the ther- distance differences

mometer by drawing lines on a divided scale. for the relative in-
Here, lengths of the thermometer column tensities of the quan-
were literally what was observed and these tities of medicines in
lengths, indeed, were the only scale values a treatment); (b) in
available for expressing temperature quantit- musical theory and
atively. To both John and William Playfair, notation (which
credit is due for their recognition that the Kepler applied, in
graphic record was as valuable, or more so, accordance with the
than the translation of a large time series into doctrine of the 'harm-
a numerical table. Tilling (1975) takes as ony of the spheres 7 ,
exemplifying the resistance to graphics in the to charting the move-
18th century that scholars, before approaching ment of the planets,
the data seriously, would first translate into as shown in
tables even the output of the automatic Figure 16); and (c) in
recording devices of the time which produced the most universal
beautiful continuous or periodic graph and elaborated way,
records. Playfair also explains the lineal by Nicole Oresme
arithmetic of his Atlas in terms of a highly and those who em-
literal metaphor: braced his theory
of configurations 7 at
Suppose the money received by a man in trade were all the tail end of the
in guineas, and that every evening he made a single pile medieval period (see
of all the guineas received during the day, each pile
Clagett, 1968: 47 ff.).

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

9
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
17
M Clagett. Oresme advanced a system for studying
Portion of text physical and psychological phenomena by
of Oresme's coordinate graphs of the intensities of their
Tractatus de
configuration- external qualities (see Figures 17 & 18). His
ibus qualitatum devotion to comprehending things in terms of
et motum. these graphic configurations is consistent
1968
with the skeptical, psychological nominalist,
probilistic currents of late medievalism which
he epitomizes. For Oresme, the surface
intensities of the qualities of objects we can
perceive and comprehend are those which
correspond to the ways in which our senses
and the powers of thought and imagination of
our minds configure (see Clagett, 1968: 12—18;
28-30). These psychological configurations,
Oresme concluded, are both permanent
constitutional ones and temporary ones
arising from experience and from what we
would now call cultural products. Oresme's
epistemology is in many ways kin to turn-of-
the-century positivism. His influence lasted
only for one generation. It was displaced by
the Copernican and Galilean interests of the
Renaissance in '"real" explanations' (Clagett,
1968: 12).
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
10
Perhaps the re-emergence of interest in
truly geometric, probabilistic graph methods
in the nineteenth century may bear some
relation to the psychological nominalist epis-
temological currents of that time. There is
considerable intertwining of the strands of the
development of positivism and of statistical
graphs - d'Alembert and Fourier, rather than
Laplace, Lagrange and Poisson, are early data
graph innovators. (Comte dedicated the first
volume of his Cours de philosophie positive to
Fourier [Hankins, 1975: 279].) The rise of en-
thusiam for data graphs and developments of
the art are contemporaneous with '...the
emergence of the positivistic strain [in French
physics] of the 1820s and 1830s onward' (Fox,
1974: 128) and the 'dethroning' of Laplace.
Key figures in two important but very differ-
ent strands of the more recent development of
statistical graphics are Karl Pearson and Otto
Neurath, both of whom were disciples of
Mach's positivism (cf. Neurath, 1973).
An important difference between Playfair's
graphs and geometric graphs that long pre-
ceded them is a distinction that is important
to the thesis I will present. For centuries,
educated persons were familiar with the dia-
grams of geometry. Not only did space signify
space in such diagrams, however. They were
also either diagrams of a nomothetic principle,
or of an abstract mathematical function, or
else precise applications of some such general
principle to an empirical problem. The
Priestley and Playfair applications of graphic
method illustrated here are of a fundamentally
different order. They are totally idiographic
graphs - the map of a concrete set of unique
historic data. In the simple terms I prefer, they
were 'proper' graphs in the sense that a noun
is proper, and, as such, quite distinct from a
diagram of a mathematical function, which
can be called 'common', as with a common
noun. (It might be nice if we used the con-
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
vention of upper and lower case to distinguish
the titles of proper graphs, such as 'The
Population of London, 1660-1978', or 'Plague
Deaths and Population Change in London,
1600-1700', from common graphs, for exam-
ple, 'Age structures of stable populations at
different levels of mortality and fertility'.
T H E CARTESIAN TRAP
In their history of important developments in
the field, Beniger and Robyn (1978) make
Descartes' contribution of his coordinate sys-
tem in 1637 a key milestone among intellect-
ual developments leading to statistical graph-
ing. So, too, does Funkhouser (1937: 287) and
many others. I attribute quite the opposite
role to the Cartesian influence. The Cartesian
system specifically - and more generally, the
philosophical outlook associated with
Cartesian geometry - acted as much or more
as impediments. Considering how they may
have acted as impediments may help explain
why statistical graphics were not invented
until they sprang, a century and a half later,
almost full-blown from Playfair's mind. This
was the mind of a person who was known to
his contemporaries more as a rather scound-
relous man of the world, than as a scholarly
man of the mind (see below). These consider-
ations may also help explain why Playfair's
inventions were not quickly adopted for
serious work. Although Playfair bragged of the
recognition he received from the French
Academy for his 'application of geometry to
economic accounts', neither the Cartesian
system, nor any geometry that did not exist
before Euclid, was at all needed for any of
Playfair's forms. Little geometry was needed
for any of the few elaborations of, or additions
to, them that saw much useful service in the
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
11
18
'Oresme's
Pipes',
theoretical
diagram from
Tractatus de
latitudinibus
formarum
[1486
(C1390)]
probably
erroneously
attributed to
Oresme. M
Clagett, 1968
statistical graphic repertoire for almost a
century after Playfair's first work. There is
precious little geometry (in the mathematical
sense) involved in the generation of most of
the graphic displays published nowadays. My
argument is more radical than the irrelevance
of geometry or analytic geometry, however.
Formal mathematical geometry seems to me
to have been a downright obstacle to the de-
velopment and diffusion of most of the graph-
ics for statistics that figure in Funkhouser's or
Beniger and Robyn's histories.
One of the earliest emulators of Playfair of
whom I have found mention included the
banker S Tertius Galton (a name familiar to
scholars, when at all, as father of the Francis
Galton, and, thus, in a biological sense, a
grandfather of modern statistics), who
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

1 9 L Cooke. A series of statistical charts shewing the

fluctuations in quantity and value of the products of the soil
no. 1 National debt (England and Ireland) No. 2 Finance.
London. 1826

2 1 William Playfair. The commercial and political atlas..

Chart of the national debt... London, 1786

W S Jevons (1886: 164-166). (Figure 19 gives

an example of Cooke's work.) The other em-
ulator was one of the most renowned figures
20 of the time, Baron von Humboldt. Humboldt
F v Humboldt. published in 1813 a 55-year, multiline time was far and away the most famous scientist of
Essai politique series chart of the money in circulation, rates his time. The sciences on which his fame
sur le royaume of foreign exchange, prices of bullion and of
de la Nouvelle
rested, and to which he applied the ideas he
Espagne wheat. Galton, and another early emulator of says he got from Playfair, were geography,
Tableau Playfair's graphs of economic time series, meteorology, and geology - in each instance,
physique de la Layton Cooke (1826), who published charts of we should note, a naturalistic and empirical
Nouvelle
Espagne. more modern appearance and technical per- science rather than a formal, experimental and
Paris, 1811 fection than Playfair's, are important along highly deductive one. In the Atlas volume of
with Playfair in having inspired the enthus- his Essai politique sur le royaume Nouvelle
iastic graphic explorations of economic data of Espagne, Humboldt avers that he used:

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

12
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

the graphical method [that] is analogous to what 22

M. PLAYFAIR first employed in a very ingenious manner, F v Humboldt
in his commercial and political Atlas and in his Essai
statistical charts of Europe. Without attaching much politique...
importance to these sketches, I cannot regard them as Cartes des
mere trifles foreign to science. It is true that the chart divers routes;
which Mr Playfair gives of the national debt of England Produits des
brings to mind the profile of the peak of Tenerife mines, qualité
de l'or et de
[compare Figure 20, 21]; but natural philosophers have
l'argent. Paris,
long indicated by similar figures the state of the 1811
barometer and the mean temperature of months.
(Humboldt, 1811: 186).

(Figure 22 illustrates Humboldt's adaptation

of Playfair's forms and Figure 2 3 two innovat-
ions of Humboldt's own devising.)
There was indeed a natural philosopher
who made extensive use of graphs of empirical
data a decade before Playfair - J H Lambert. In
addition to being graphs of empirical data,
Lambert's graphs on heat (Lambert, 1779),
light (Lambert, 1760) and magnetism
(Lambert, 1765) depart from what was com-
23
monplace before in representing on the spatial F v Humboldt.
plane variables other than space, and the dis- Essai
tribution of objects in space, either statically politique...
/. Tableau
or as they moved through time. There is one comparatif de
notable difference in Lambert's use of graphs l'etendu
and Playfair's, however. Lambert used graphs terrestial...
II. Tableau
to present the results of experiments which terrestial et
confirmed a general scientific principle ex- populations des
pressible as a simple mathematical function, metropoles...
Paris, 1811
such as those of the annual cycle of temp-
erature at various soil depths (Figure 24) or of
magnetic variation over time (Figure 25).
Though displaying the empirical data, his
graphs were like those which had been
produced long before, essentially graphs of the
mathematical function which 'fit' the data.
(According to Tilling, however, despite the
renown of Lambert's work, his use of the
graphic method was not emulated for many
years.) Playfair graphed data when he had no
such expectation of finding conformity with a
neat principle of the Law of Nature. And
while Huygens had more than a century

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

13
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

24 PRAGMATIC PRIMITIVISM
J H Lambert
Pyrometrie
Graphs of The great scientific advance of Playfair's
variation in soil graphs can therefore be said to reside in their
temperature. scientific primitiveness. They required scant
Berlin, 1779
geometry to execute; they fit no mathematical
function. But was Playfair's attention to
naturalistic social data merely 'primitive 7 ?
The period in which statistical graphs
emerged was one of extremely rapid scientific
discovery. It is quite instructive to look ran­
domly through volumes of the Philosophical
25 transactions of the seventeenth and eight­
J H Lambert eenth centuries to see with what startling
'Theorie der rapidity fundamental discovery followed fun­
Zuverlässingheit
der Beobach-
damental discovery. Men were exploring by
tungen und systematic, controlled observations for the
Versuche'. first time. Remarkably often, their data con­
Graph of
magnetic formed nicely to what a rationalistic orient­
variation. ation to the world expected - that is, a simple
Berlin, 1765 mathematical expression. Quite remarkably,
however, it was not until late in the game,
mostly in the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, that scholars came to be inclined and
able simply to plot the data and see writ in the
plot, in God's neat and bold handwriting, as it
were, the mathematical principle of His Noble
Design. Developments in the precision of
instruments and procedure made this orient­
ation progressively more successful. The
development of curve fitting later made it
successful even in the face of highly erratic
means of observation and experimental
control.
earlier graphed non-experimental historical As Pearson (1978) saw it, statisticians,
data (Figure 14, above), Huygens also was con­ social scientists and their forebears over the
structing a graph of a smoothed fit (to ages divide (although not always neatly) into
Graunťs data), not a graph of what Tukey two classes: first, there are the essentially
(1977) calls the 'rough 7 . naturalistic ones who have been content to
find a bit of order in observations on which
they can seize. They aimed at imposing just a
little bit more order on what they took for
granted was an extremely complicated,

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

14
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
disorderly and largely fortuitous world of
imperfect man's vision and creation. On the
other hand, there were scientists out to reveal
The Grand Design. They believed that God
wrote in a bold clear hand. Their graphs, and
their equations, were the revelations of the
elegant harmonies of God's handiwork (Figure
16, above). Statistics is descended partly from
people of the latter persuasion, such as
Süssmilch and Arbuthnot; but more from
people of the former, more Hobbesian stripe:
Graunt, Petty, and Austrian and German table
freaks. Playfair's intellectual lineage is also
Hobbesian.
The path of the diffusion of the data graph-
ing into science actually follows more directly
from the naturalistic than from Cartesian
rationalistic tradition, from Playfair rather
than from Lambert, for it was in the evolution
of statistics that the data graph achieved
prominence and was diffused outward to other
disciplines. Its inventor, Playfair, was not a
scientist nor a member of the scholarly
establishment of the time, but by reputation
more of the business-schemer, scoundrel, un-
successful mechanical inventor, political ad-
venturer, and inveterate and prolific political
pamphleteer. The scandalous features of his
career are those on which the British
Dictionary of national biography (1921)
dwells, with no mention at all of his being the
fountainhead of statistical graphics. Indeed,
one cannot ascertain from its text that he had
anything whatsoever to do with statistical
graphics. Judging from that biography, we have
a very unlikely candidate indeed for a major
scientific advance. But that biography is a
distortion.
One feature of that biography helps explain
both why Playfair came upon his 'invention'
and why others of his time did not immediat-
ely emulate it. He was orphaned when he was
13 and thereafter apprenticed to Andrew
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3–25
15
Meikle, the inventor of the threshing mach-
ine. At 21, he became employed as a draughts-
man for Boulton & Watt 9 at Birmingham.
Watt's inventiveness was intensively applied
to improvements and new uses of graphic
means for making quantitative relationships
visible. One of his major contributions to the
development of the steam engine was his
invention of the indicators which draw a
diagram of the relation of the steam's pressure
to its volume as the stroke proceeds - an
instrument which was called the steam
engineer's equivalent of the stethoscope.
Watt, however, was not interested in the
essence of steam, but in steam as it behaved in
a steam engine. His theories were neither
rigorous nor accurate, but they were good
enough to build pretty good steam engines.
Playfair's master was also inventor of such
tools important for the graphic art as the
glutinous ink manuscript copying machine
and tools for copying, engraving and making
reduced copies. We see two aspects of Playfair
here that differentiated him from contempor-
aries of the scientific establishment. He was a
skilled draughtsman with much experience in
preparing diagrams for engraving and
publication. He could whip out technically
superior charts that others with less training
could produce only by painstaking and time-
consuming labour. (Playfair also had a knack
for whipping out very neat prose to accom-
pany them - he was an extraordinarily prolific
and readable writer, as well.) Perhaps one of
the impediments to the innovation of stat-
istical graphics (and it is an impediment that
computer graphics is just beginning to make
disappear) is that so few people who work
with data have possessed the skill and training
for producing readily graphs that measured up
to the technical proficiency of those produced
by this innovator. Playfair, who owned a
silversmithing business, had an understanding
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
of the means of producing the engravings
required for publishing his graphs. (Biderman
[1981] discusses negative influence of typo-
graphic technology on the roles played by data
graphs in science.)
Playfair's long association during his form-
ative years with great inventors made for a
person attuned to the practical, rather than
the theoretical; with coming up with anything
that worked nicely for things that were
important to daily affairs of men - business,
and the politics with which business was
closely allied. The theories that concerned
him most were the practical theories of
industry, business and politics. His polemical
political tracts argue pragmatically rather than
moralistically.
Another feature of Playfair's scientific
orientation is discernible in the biography of
his older brother, John, who took charge of
William's education when the latter was 13
years old. The older Playfair was indeed a
member in very good standing of the scholarly
establishment. with prominent achievements
in mathematics and geology. It was a particul-
ar wing of the British (and, more particularly,
the Scottish) scholarly establishment,
however, to which John belonged. For me, as
a sociologist, the most prominent fact about
John Playfair was that for a time he held the
professorship of mathematics at the
University of Edinburgh jointly with Adam
Ferguson. [Dictionary of national biography,
1921: 15, 1299-1300.) John's employment
from 1783 to 1787 was as tutor to two other
Fergusons. Adam Ferguson is the member of
the Edinburgh group of 'Scottish moralists'
that included Hume, Karnes, and Adam
Smith. He has been called the 'first
sociologist'. 'Ferguson's chief significance is
due to the prominent part he played in divor-
cing philosophy from the prevailing rational-
istic a priori approach and in substituting the
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
16
inductive historical method.' (Lehmann,
1935). John Playfair played a similar role in
geology.
CIVIL AND SOCIAL ENGINEERS
With regard to orientations toward social
phenomena., additional distinctions are im-
portant. Some scholars are inclined to the
view that men and their works are either no
less well ordered and nicely describable than
other phenomena, or no more so. Others make
a sharp division between nature, on the one
hand, and man and society, on the other. But
there are also divisions here in views as to
whether more orderliness can always be found
in the doings of nature or of man. Some
engineers see themselves as imposing force-
fully some nice works of orderliness on an
otherwise complex and messy world. Many of
those given to social engineering, as well as
physical engineers, take this view toward their
respective domains. Civil engineers, in part-
icular, can see themselves as imposing much
of whatever neat order one will find in either
the physical or social domains. Much as a
bridge or highway is the imposition of a highly
orderly pattern on a rather disorderly natural
and social landscape, the graphs of the
engineering-trained statisticians, such as those
important in the French tradition of statistical
graphs in the nineteenth century, were often
impositions of quantitative clarity on the
confusion of a map or other plot of actual data.
Isobar maps of population (Vauthier, 1874; see
also 1890) or of weather (Lalanne, 1845) are
such examples and exemplify the continuing
contributions to the state of the art of the
Ingénieurs des ponts et chaussées au
Ministère des travaux publics through the
entire century.
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
PRE-MATHEMATICAL STATISTICS
The empirical graph, prior to the middle of the
eighteenth century , was not of much use for
those looking for an elegant mathematical
representation of God's hand in the affairs of
men because there was scant means of order-
ing any data to accord with so elegant a vision
until quite recently. My guess as to why
scholars such as Graunt and Petty did not
graph data is that they associated the form
with efforts at geometric representations of
the perfect laws of Creation, rather than the
messy doings of imperfect man. I suspect that
the bit of order they aspired to find and the bit
more order they hoped to impose by use of
Political Arithmetik were orders of a different
26 order than those of diagrams of mathematical
A Quetelet. functions, whether of Cartesian mathematics
Lettres sur la
theorie des or the laws in Newton's Principia.
probabilities Old, well-institutionalized uses of a
Urn scheme
cultural form may interfere with, rather than
(untitled
figure). facilitate, putting that same form, or ones
Brussels, 1846 closely resembling it, to some different man-
ner of use. To use
DES MOYENNES ET DES LIMITES. 103 a trite example,
boules, se trouve représentée pour la hauteur du petit rec- the Jacquard
tangle construit sur o'p'. La table de possibilité donnerait le
nombre 0,011794; et la figure montre en effet que cette pro-
machine did not
babilité est à peu près la moitié de la probabilité maximum, lead either to
qui consiste à prendre 499 boules blanches dans un seul
tirage, probabilité représentée, dans la figure, par le rec- computing or the
tangle le plus grand, celui construit sur ab'.
host of other auto-
mated control
processes to which
the basic idea is
applicable.
We must differ-
entiate graphing
Les petits rectangles s'abaissent ensuite si rapidement that is done of
que celui qui répond à la probabilité de prendre 430 boules
blanches dans un tirage de 999, boules a une hauteur à peu spatial data and
près nulle. Et cependant, pour suivre la loi de continuité in-
diquée par la théorie, il faudrait en construire encore «0
other data in con-
successivement décroissant de hauteur. J'ai pris le parti de junction with ap-
ne pas les représenter dans la figure, car la loupe même
n'aurait pas suffi pour les faire apprécier. Dans notre échelle proaches to those
de possibilité j'ai pu, au moyen des nombres, porter les
data by analytic
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3–25
17
geometry and other formal, mathematical
geometry, on the one hand, from the graphing
of data, as by Playfair, without the intention
(or ability) to approach the data by formal
mathematics, but rather with the belief that
the mind of the eye had to make what sense
there was to be made of the data. One possible
explanation, then, for the failures to apply
graphs prior to Playfair, is that graphs tended
to be thought applicable only where geometry
was properly applicable.
What, then, of the diagrams of scholars
such as Lambert, Gauss and Legendre? Should
not theoretical graphs of social phenomena,
or curve fitting and least squares, have paved
the way more quickly for plottings of smooth-
ed, fitted and residual representations of
statistics? Possibly not until the ideas of least-
squares curve-fitting were transferred to work
by people who were statisticians in philoso-
phy and temperament. Truly mathematical
statistics in statistical data graphs are en-
countered first in the work of statisticians
whose interests lay in the variation, not
simply in getting rid of it, as was the case with
the error probability theorists. An additional
consideration is that least squares developed
in a spatial science - astronomy. It was not the
values of observations that astronomers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wanted
to see or show, but the neat mathematical
principle that was nature's law, or the actual
true position of stars or other objects in space
(see Herschel, 1833).
Two important types of exception should
be noted. The first were the uses of data
graphs to demonstrate error theory, itself - to
show how the grand design prevails despite
the irregularities produced by the (unholy)
workings of chance. Quetelet, whom Pearson
(1978: 160) associated with this De Moivrian
philosophy, produced the first 'urn scheme'
graph (Figure 26). Like Quetelet, Florence
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

29
J Fletcher.
'Moral and
educational
27 statistics of
F Nightingale.
England and
Notes on
Wales', Journal
matters
of Statistical
affecting the
Society of
health,
London, 12.
efficiency and Ignorance in
hospital England and
administration Wales. 1849
of the British
Army. London,
1858 fluctuations should be attributed to Lucretian
"Chance".' What Nightingale sought to por-
tray in her polemical graphs, however, were
the pestiferous works of Lucifer, not the hand
of the Deity. She was continuing the righteous
campaign of her immediate predecessors in
the Statistical Movement against the dis-
orderly evils: filth, disease, pauperism,
bastardy, crime. Moral statisticians of the mid
nineteenth century used graphs of the
28 distributions of these evils in advocacy of
A Balbi and
A M Guerry. unleashing their favoured virtuous weapons,
Statistiques hygiene, education and industry (see Cullen,
Comparees...
Criemes contre
1975). Among the most celebrated examples
les proprietes. are Fletcher's adaptations of the chloropleth
Paris, 1829 methods of the French moral statistician,
Guerry (Figure 28). Fletcher's purpose was to
Nightingale (1858), renowned for her per-
argue the case for compulsory free education
suasive 'petal' charts (Figure 27), was deplored
by 'demonstrating' the association of illiteracy
by Pearson as a believer in the philosophy:
with crime and assorted other evils (Figures
'The Deity fixed the means... [and] the
29 & 30)

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

18
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
30
J Fletcher
'Moral and
educational
statistics of
England and
Wales', Journal
of Statistical
Society of
London, 12
Crime in
England and
Wales. 1849
Thus, there were those scholars who were
disposed to the belief that there was a Divine
geometry, some of whom with various degrees
of assiduousness sought to search for it in
their scientific endeavors, but who were free
to mobilize purely empirical graphs for
portraying aspects of the social world they
regarded as anything but divine.
It is useful to distinguish between the use
of the graph to display the mathematics
applicable to data and the use of mathematics
to facilitate the graph, that is, the visual dis-
play of data. Lambert's graphs, as we have
noted, have the former function. Among
many examples of the latter kind, where
mathematics is introduced to transform and
arrange the data for clearer or more accurate
display to the eye, we have Fourier's use of
what Galton later termed the 'ogive' to
display the age distribution of a population.
INF. DES. J. 6/1 (1990) 3-25
19
31
L L Lalanne.
Cours complet
de
meteorologie
de L F Kaemtz
Isobar of
weather
(portion of
untitled figure).
Paris, 1845
Lalanne's (1845) contour displays of
meteorogical data (Figure 31) and Vauthier's
adaptation of contours to displaying
population density distributions (Figure 32),
and Jevons' (1884) uses of semilog scales for
time series (Figure 33). Eventually, we reach
an integration of the two forms of
mathematics in graphs.
MATHEMATICAL STATISTICAL GRAPHS
It was only after Playfair's time that we had
graphs which combined common and proper
features - in which general mathematical
functions are fitted to proper empirical variat-
ion. And it was yet later still, when Galton got
the help of some mathematically inclined col-
leagues, Pearson and Weldon, that it became
common in statistics for the functions that
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

32 were being fit to graphed data to be functions

L Vauthier.
'Note sur une of a statistical theory, a theory of variability,
carte not simply general functions of mathematics.
statistique The true geometricization of statistics is a
figurant la
repartition de very recent development. The first correlation
la population diagram (1886) (Figure 34) was born a few
de Paris', years after my father was.
Comptes
rendus...
Population
density.
T H E RESURGENCE OF EXPLORATORY NATURALISM
Paris, 1874

The mathematicization of statistics which

Galton and Pearson set in motion actually
paved the way more for statistical work by
scholars who had a different epistemological
orientation than it did for those who shared
their positivistic philosophy. It also made
possible the application of the graph form to
nomothetic as well as idiographic purposes -
by positivists or non-positivists alike.
We are just passing through another phase
of the development of the history of statistics,
one in which a formal, mathematically nomo-
thetic emphasis largely displaced the older
preoccupation with important concrete data
that were not necessarily tractable for the
Fig. 45. Carte statistique de la répartition de la population dans les différents quartiers de Paris, purposes of formal analysis. As documented
dressée en 1874 par Vauthier, suivant le système proposé en 1845 par Lalanne.
by a content analysis Steve Fienberg (1979)
performed on charts in the Journal of the
American Statistical Association and
Biometrika for the period from 1921 to 1975,
what I call 'proper graphs' - at the beginning
of the period, the predominant chart form -
became largely displaced by either 'common'
diagrams or diagrammatic charts with
common and proper features in admixture. At
the same time the number of charts and the
space devoted to charts shrunk dramatically,
reaching a m i n i m u m during the period of the
1960s. Fienberg's data show an increase in the
use of graphs during the first part of the 1970s
3 3 W S Jeavons. Investigations in currency and finance and, when someone gets around to counting
Semilog scale: Value of exports of merchandise - England to
India. London, 1884 again, I am sure the trend will show a great

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25

20
 ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA

resurgence of the use of charts in the late

1970s and in the 1980s. That resurgence
reflects in considerable measure renewed
vigor for the pragmatic, idiographic
orientation to data exemplified by Playfair - a
respect for finding whatever order one can in
any data important to man. Some of the
revival of graphics has been associated with a
switch in emphasis in statistics toward giving
more attention to what Tukey (1977) calls
'exploratory', as distinct from 'confirmatory 7 ,
data analysis. 1 0 Much of the attention to data
display has been directed to 'graphic' methods
where graphic is defined implicitly by the
exclusion of numerical tables and the
functional notation of mathematics.
There has been a revival in recent years of 34
statistics also seems to have benefitted from F Galton.
serious attention to the orderly display of the involvement of statisticians with the 'Diagram based
data; of how data may be arranged on paper (or kinds of activities which were Playfair's on Table 1'.
From K
other visual media) so that one can more calling - the enlightenment and persuasion of Pearson,
readily make sense out of them. Although the public and its leaders. One can employ 'Notes on the
some of the proposals for improved data dis- graphs in the service of Playfair's aim of sim- history of
correlation'.
play make use of formal mathematical plifying the presentation of complicated data
principles and manipulations, such as robust for its quick and ready grasp by the busy man
estimation and the logics of data transformat- of affairs as well as for displaying the conform-
ions, the revival represents some reversion to ity of phenomena to the elegant geometric
interests of a pre-mathematical stage of stat- curves of scientific theory.
istical work; that is, greater reliance upon the
exploration of the meaning of data with 'the
mind's eye' than by the application of math- CONCLUSION
ematical functions. Pre-mathematical applies
here both in the prior historical sense of stages In the time immediately before Playfair,
of the development of the discipline, and in notions about the mathematical and scientific
the sense of the prior stages of the work of character of scientific graphs hindered the
dealing with data. application of graph representations for the
The minds behind the eyes of graphic users mundane purposes and in the elementary
are now much better equipped than in the manner of Playfair's innovations. Cartesian
past, however, with knowledge of a repertoire graphs for a long time led most of the best and
of known mathematical-statistical shapes and brightest toward a theoretically mechanistic,
forms that prove regularly handy for finding rather than statistical empiricist orientation
order in complex data. to their objects of study. I have attempted to
The current resurgence in graphics within suggest reasons why Playfair was immune to

INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3–25

21
 ALBERT BIDERMAN . THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
these influences and pretensions. In the years
immediately after Playfair, prevailing con-
ceptions toward mathematics and science
again acted as impediments to the adoption of
his innovations and further developments of
statistical graphics. These conceptions led
those who did employ simple empirical
statistical graphs to seek and to claim for
them grander scientific purpose and achieve-
ment than they fulfilled. It led the most
'scientifically 7 inclined of those who did use
statistical graphs in the mid eighteenth
century to misconceive of what they were
doing in an attempt to make of these graphs
what they were not - that is, they were not
doing geometry and they were not revealing
fundamental principles of nature. This de-
tracted from the very real value their graphic
devices served in making phenomena they
graphed eminently more comprehensible. On
the other hand, it led those who saw clearly
the geometric primitiveness of the statistical
graphs of the early and mid nineteenth
century to regard them as purely a means of
popularization, if not the vulgarization, of
statistics.
Illustrative of these points was the con-
troversy between A. Ficker and H. Schwabe at
the 1872 International Statistical Congress.
Ficker's pleas for the use of graphs in statistics
ran as follows: Esteemed sciences and technics
universally use diagrams and find them
essential. 11 Therefore, statistics will only be
esteemed as a real science if it uses diagrams.
Schwabe's rejoinder was that, in statistics,
graphs ('raumliche Bilder oder Zeichnungen')
served purely didactic purposes, indeed
popularization. (Sième Congrès International
de Statistique, 1872: 47, 61.) Of course, adding
Fickeťs and Schwabe's points together yields
the proposition: 'Use of statistical graphs will
make statistics popularly accepted as a true
science.' Graphs, indeed, can make anything
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
22
look 'scientific' and can also be used to give
the appearance of order and precision where
neither has been achieved.
Confusion about the nature and purpose of
graphs still often leads to overly limited and
mistaken ideas of how the chart forms that
have earned a secure niche (mostly those of
Playfair) and other forms that may be devised
in the future can serve valuably. Oresme had
it right. The geometry of graphs cannot be
merely the geometry of the configurations of
phenomena but also the geometry of the
physiological, psychological and cultural
systems of perception and comprehension.
Acknowledgments
It is infeasible for me to list everyone who in one way
or another has given me assistance over the past 10
years in my studies reflected in the present paper. They
include those who at various times have been
colleagues in the Graphic Social Reporting Project,
which was supported in part by the National Science
Foundation under Grants No. GS-29115 and SOC76-
17768 to the Bureau of Social Science Research: James
Beniger, Barry Feinberg, Carolyn Franklin, Dorothy
Robyn and Howard Wainer. Contributors of editorial,
bibliographic and production support have included:
Norma Chapman, Michael C. Crotty, Lucy Duff, Mary
Hartz, Anne M. B. Morgan, Molly Skardon, Elizabeth
Stevens-Jabine and Phyllis Zander. As with others who
work on the history of statistical graphs, my way was
paved by the work of H. G. Funkhouser (1937). My
special thanks to Patricia Costigan-Eaves for
indispensible help with both the text and illustrations
of this paper. The paper benefits from some specific
information provided by William Kruskal and by Steve
Stigler. Many anonymous librarians were also essential
contributors, particularly at the national libraries in
Washington, London and Paris.
Notes
1. This is a revision of that paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, San Fancisco, January 1980.
Portions were also included in an earlier paper,
'Intellectual impediments to the development and
diffusion of statistical graphics, 1637-1980', read at the
First General Conference on Social Graphics, Leesburg,
Virginia, October, 1978 (unpublished).
 ALBERT BIDERMAN • THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
2. See, for example, Funkhouser (1937: 288-290),
Beniger and Robyn (1978) for statements crediting
Playfair with the invention of statistical graphs.
3. May (1975) discusses the 'historiographic vice' of
'priority chasing'. Chasing 'firsts' in quantitative
graphics has been so often a losing game that I am
disposed to play it here only with utmost caution.
4. Using the x-axis for time remains the dominant
convention. Playfair apparently plotted this way
because he was conscious of the metaphor of a literal
histogram that might be constructed by piling up
quantities of coins representing either money amounts
themselves or the value of quantities of commodities
(Playfair, 1786 [1801]: xii). Time, as employed in
Playfair's economic time series, fits the metaphor of a
surface. For a discussion of the kinematic metaphor of
time used prior to Playfair in Cartesian diagrams, see
text, below. By contrast, in the genealogical charts of
Priestly that preceded Playfair's graphs, such metaphors
as suggested by words such as 'descent' and 'tree' make
a vertical portrayal of time the more 'natural' seeming.
The vertical metaphor for time in time series is that
preferred by Neurath (1936).
5. See McEvoy and McGuire (1975) for a discussion of
Priestley's sensationist epistemological orientation - an
orientation which is consistent with his prominent
position as innovator of forms for graphic display of
data. For a discussion of the social-political-intellectual
links of Priestley and Playfair, see Smiles (1904).
6. Their view and mine of graphic innovation differs
form that of Robinson (1982: 33), who writes:
Numerous maps by students of the physical world, on such
subjects as magnetic phenomena, currents, and geology,
appeared form 1650 on. By contrast, as far as we know now, very
few maps of social subjects such as population, religion, or
production, appeared before 1820. To be sure..., there were
premap, graphic representations of statistics in the latter part of
the eighteenth century by such notables as A. F. W. Crome and
William Playfair, but there were no real thematic maps
portraying statistical data.
It takes a cartographer's provincialism to apply the
label 'premap' to Crome's metaphorical transformation
of the concept of the Karte or the corresponding and
contemporaneous departure by Playfair from the
commonplace in producing an atlas without maps.
Playfair seems to me to have simply been reluctant to
perpetuate the visual fallacy of the simple chloropleth.
7. Oresme is given some prominence (pp 272-7) in
Funkhouser's (1937) influential history of statistical
graphics, as well as in Beniger and Robyn's (1978) more
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
23
recent treatment. The 'Pipes of Pan' (Figure 18)
illustrations in these sources are taken from a 1486
edition of Tractatus de latitudinibus formarum - a
work Clagett (1968: 85) convincingly argues was not
written by Oresme, but probably by one of his
followers, Jacobus de Sancto Martino, 'about 1390 (or
earlier)'. Clagett's reprint, translation and discussion of
Oresme's Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et
motum can be an extremely instructive source for more
than historical reasons for those interested in how and
why one may employ graphic representation of
quantity.
8. According to Karl Pearson (1914: Vol I, 50), Galton
predicted by this charting the financial crisis of 1831
that created a ruinous run on his own bank.
9. Smiles's (1904) biography of Boulton and Watt
describes the small literary and scientific circle which
influenced Playfair. The Galtons who figure later in the
present paper stem from the marital alliance of the
Darwins and the Galtons that was forged in this circle.
10. A companion paper to the present one (Biderman,
1978) argues that the loss of iconic features by numeral
systems as they developed historically indicated the
low cultural importance of searching visually for
pattern in large quantitative data sets. A demand for
iconic numeric representation began to be experienced
once it became common to approach data with an
exploratory statistical orientation.
11. This association of science with graphic devices is
of long standing. In the composite view of work in
progress at the French Royal Academy of Sciences in
1698 (shown in Figure 35), one can note that almost
every little science group had its graphic device.
35
A composite
view showing
work in
progress at the
French Royal
Academy. 1698

Balbi A & Guerry A M (1829)
Crimes contre les propriétes
Statistiques Comparées,
Paris
Beniger J R &
Robyn D L (1978)
Quantitative graphics in
statistics: A brief history
The American Statistician,
32 (1): 1-11
Biderman A D (1978)
Why numeral systems are so
imperfectly iconic, presented
at the First General
Conference on Social
Graphics at Leesburg,
Virginia, 22-24 October
1978. Washington D C: The
Bureau of Social Science
Research, Inc
Biderman A D (1981)
The graph as victim of
adverse discrimination and
segregation: comment
occasioned by the first issue
of Information design journal
Information design journal,
1/4: 232-241
Boyer C B(1947)
Note on an early graph of
statistical data (Huygens
1669) Isis 37 (3-4):
148-149
Brinton W C (1914)
Graphic methods for
presenting facts Engineering
Magazine, New York
Clagett M (1968)
Nicole Oresme and the
medieval geometry of
qualities and motions
Madison, Wisconsin:
University of Wisconsin Press
Congrès International de
Statistique (1872)
Compte-Rendu de la
huitième session... St
Petersburg: Trente et Fusnot
ALBERT BIDERMAN ■ THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
Cooke L (1826)
A series of statistical charts
shewing the fluctuations in
quantity and value of the
products of the soil...
London
Crome A W F (1782)
Producten-Karte von Europa
Dessau
Crome A W F(1785)
Uber die Grösse und
Bevölkerung der Sämtlichen
Europaischen Staaten
Leipzig
Cullen M J (1975)
The statistical movement in
early Victorian Britain New
York: Barnes & Noble books
Dictionary of National
Biography (1921)
'John Playfair' Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Renberg S E (1979)
Graphical methods in
statistics The American
Statistician 33: 165-178
Fletcher J (1849)
Moral and educational
statistics of England and
Wales Journal of the
Statistical Society of London
12: 151-176, 189-335
Fox, R (1974)
The rise and fall of Laplacian
physics. In McCormmach R
(editor) Historical studies in
the physical sciences vol 4
Princeton: Princeton
University Press
Funkhouser H G (1937)
Historical development of the
graphical representation of
statistical data Osiris 3:
269-404
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
24
Funkhouser H G &
Walker H M (1935)
Playfair and his charts
Economic history (A
supplement of The Economic
Journal) 3 (10): 103-109
Galton S T (1813)
A chart exhibiting the
relation between the amount
of Bank of England notes in
circulation and the prices of
gold and silver bullion and of
wheat...
London: J Johnson & Co
Hankins T L (1975)
Life and work of Fourier
Science 189: 279
Herschel J F W (1833)
On the investigation of the
orbits of revolving double
stars Memoirs of the Royal
Astronomical Society 5:
171-172
Humboldt F W K H Avon
(1811)
Essai politique sur le
Royaume de la Nouvelle-
Espagne, avec un Atlas
physique et géographique
Paris
Jevons, W S (1884)
Investigations in currency
and finance London:
Macmillan
Kepler J (1619)
Harmonices Mundi
(Copy from British Museum,
Department of Printed
Books)
Lalanne L (1845)
Sur la Représentation
Graphique des Tableaux
Méteorologiques et des Lois
Naturelles en Général,
Appendix to Cours Complét
de Meterologie de L F
Kaemtz, translated and
annotated by C Martins,
Paris
Lambert J H (1760)
Photometria Augustae
Vindelicorum
Lambert J H (1765)
Theorie der Zuverlässigheit,
In Beytrage sum Gebrauche
der Mathematik und Deren
Andwendung, vol 1:
424-488, Berlin
Lambert J H (1779)
Pyrometrie Berlin
Lehmann W C (1935)
Adam Ferguson, In
Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences, Vol 6: 184. New
York: Macmillan
Locke L L (1923)
The ancient Quipu or
Peruvian knot record
Washington D C: The
American Museum of Natural
History
May KO (1975)
Historiographic Vices II.
Priority Chasing Historia
Mathematica 2: 315-317
McEvoy J G &
McGuire J E (1975)
Priestley's way of rational
dissent, In McCormach R
(editor) Historical studies in
the physical sciences vol 5:
325-404. Princeton:
Princeton University Press
Neurath 0 (1936)
International Picture
Language Psyche Miniature
Series London: Kegan Paul
Neurath 0 (1973)
Empiricism and sociology
(ed. M Neurath & R S Cohen)
Boston: D Reidel
Newton I (1687)
Philosophiae Naturalia
Principia Mathematica
London

Nightingale F (1858)
A/ořes on matters affecting
the health, efficiency and
hospital administration of the
British army London:
Harrison and Sons
Pearson K (1920)
Notes on the history of
correlation
Paper read to the Society of
Biometricians and
Mathematical Statisticans.
Biometrika 13: 24-45
Pearson K (1914)
The life, letters and labours
of Francis Galton Vol I: 50
Pearson K (1978)
The history of statistics in
the 17th and 18th centuries
against the changing
background of the
intellectual, scientific and
religious thought London and
High Wycombe: Charles
Griffin
ALBERT BIDERMAN . THE PLAYFAIR ENIGMA
Playfair W (1786)
The Commercial and Political
Atlas; representing...the
progress of the commerce,
revenues, expenditures, and
debts of England, during the
whole of the eighteenth
century London: Corry, 3rd
edition, London: Stockdale,
1801
Playfair W (1801)
Statistical Breviary: Shewing,
on a Principle Entirely New,
the Resources of Every State
and Kingdom in Europe
London
Playfair (1807)
An Inquiry into the
Permanent Causes of the
Decline and Fall of Powerful
and Wealthy Nations... 2nd
edition London
INF. DES. J. 6 / 1 (1990) 3-25
25
Plot R (1685)
A letter from Dr Robert Plot
of Oxford to Dr Martin Lister
F of the R S... Philosophical
Trans. 15 (169): 920-931
Priestley J B (1765)
A Chart of Biography London
Priestley J B (1769)
A New Chart of History
London
Quetelet A (1846)
Lettres sur la Théorie des
Probabilités Brussels
Robinson A H (1982)
Early Thematic Mapping in
the History of Cartography
Chicago: University of
Chicago Press
Smiles S (1904)
Lives of the Engineers
Boulton and Watt New
York:Charles Scribner's
Tilling L (1975)
Early experimental graphs
British Journal for the History
of Sciences: 193-213
Tukey J W(1977)
Exploratory Data Analysis
Reading Mass.: Addison-
Wesley
Vauthier L L (1874)
Note sur une carte
statistique figurant la
repartition de la population
de Paris Comptes Rendus
des Sciences de l'Académie
des Sciences 78: 264-267
Vauthier L L (1980)
Quelques considerations
élémentaires sur les
constructions graphiques et
leur emploi en statistique
Journal de la Société de
Statistique de Paris 3 1 :
166-191