Chapter 5

The Big Bang: William Playfair, the Father of Modern Graphics

Synopsis

At the beginning of the 19th Century, nearly all of the modern forms of data graphics— the pie chart, the line graph of a time series, and the bar chart— were invented. These key developments were all due to a wily Scot named William Playfair. He can rightly be called the father of modern graphical methods, and it is only a slight stretch to consider his contributions to be the Big Bang of data graphics.

Chapter contents

• Playfair’s Life
• Playfair’s Graphic Contributions
• The First Pie
• Time-Series Line Graphs
  • Import and Exports
    
  • Playfair’s Failure: Problems With Curve-Difference Charts
  • England’s National Debt
• Bar Charts
  • Earlier Bar Charts
• Charts Of History
• Ridgeline Plots
• Why Playfair?
• Playfair’s legacy

Selected Figures

Figure 5.1: Graphical conventions Some of the basic graphical conventions for statistical charts established by Playfair. These features were designed to make graphs more directly readable and understandable. Source: William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, London, 1786. Labels by the authors.

Figure 5.2: Pie chart details Three details from Playfair’s Chart 2, showing two pie charts (left: Turkish Empire; middle: German Empire) and a Venn-like diagram (right) for the German Empire. Source: William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary, London, 1801.

Figure 5.3: Exports and imports with Germany A time-series line graph showing England’s im- ports from and exports to Germany over the entire eighteenth century. The area between the curves represents the balance of trade, labeled “Balance in Favor of England.” Source: William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, London, 1786.

Figure 5.4: Exports and imports with France A time-series line graph showing England’s exports to and imports from France over the entire eighteenth century. The area between the curves represents the balance of trade, labeled “Balance in Favor of England.” Source: William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, London, 1786.

Figure 5.5: Plotting the difference between curves Left: Re-creation of Playfair’s chart of the exports and imports between England and the East Indies; right: a direct plot of balance of trade, exports minus imports. Source: Redrawn from William S. Cleveland, The Elements of Graphing Data. New Jersey: Hobart Press, 1994, fig. 4.2. Rcode: 05_5-playfair-east-indies.R

Figure 5.6: Plotting the national debt Playfair’s chart of the national debt of England containing a lot of explanatory collateral information brilliantly integrated. Source: William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, London, 1786.

Figure 5.7: Playfair’s first bar chart Playfair’s bar chart of the imports (gray bars) and exports (black) to Scotland in 1781 from 17 different places. Source: William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, London, 1786.

Figure 5.8: The first known bar chart A bar chart by Philippe Buache and Guillaume de L’Isle showing both the low and high water marks of the Seine for the thirty-five years between 1732 until 1766. Source: Philippe Buache, Cartes et tables de la géographie physique ou naturelle, Paris, 1754.

Figure 5.9: Parallel time-series A time-series display showing three parallel time-series: prices of a quarter of wheat (the histogram bars), wages of a good mechanic (the line beneath it) and the reigns of English monarchs from Elizabeth I to George IV (1565 through 1820). Source: William Playfair, A Letter on Our Agricultural Distresses, Their Causes and Remedies. London: W. Sams, 1821.

Plate P.5: First pie chart Playfair’s 1801 graphic depiction of fifteen nations’ size, location, population and revenue. Its representation of the location of the Turkish Empire was the first pie chart. Source: William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary, (London) 1801.

Plate P.6: First pie charts on a map Minard’s 1858 divided-circle map, showing the amounts and proportions of butcher’s meats supplied to the Paris market. Segments show the relative proportions of beef, port, and lamb. It is the first known use of pie charts in thematic cartography, and also show the total by area. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Plate P.8: The long view of history Playfair’s “Chart of Universal Commercial History.” Source: William Playfair, An Inquiry Into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations . . . Designed to Shew How the Prosperity of the British Empire May Be Prolonged. London: Greenland and Norris, 1805.