Section outline

    • The use of statistical graphics did not proliferate in Playfair’s lifetime—he died in 1823. But by the beginning of the 20th century, graphical representations of data were common in textbooks and used by governments, financiers, and scientists. Both the French and American governments annually published statistical atlases filled with charts that aimed to explain the world.

      Yet charts were nowhere to be seen in the newspaper. There were lots of statistics in the paper. Journalists wrote about trends in the bond markets, activity in the commodity markets, and changing birth rates. Numbers were a big part of the media; they just weren’t visualized.”

      Adapted from Priceonomics by Dan Kopf, Sep 14, 2016