How far back does the use of visual graphs to represent numeric data go? I remember something about a classic graph used (contemporaneously) to represent the attrition of Napolean’s troops during the Russian Winter but how far back does representing quantative data as a visual graphic to display information really go?
I’d say it goes back to paleolithic times. Abstraction of numeric data is a fundamental human quality. Of course, in those days the human knowledge of numbers was something like “1, 2, lots and lots.” So they produced cave paintings that said things like “Og see lots and lots of animals.”
Chas, I think you’re putting the horse before Descartes (sorry, but someone had to say it).
Modern graphing of data with x-y coordinates is credited to Rene Descartes, who live in the early 17th century. That’s why they are called Cartesian coordinates. That’s not to say there weren’t other ways of representing data graphically before that.
Thanks!
Egyptian tomb painters had a numeric shorthand for representing the strength of armies in battle. They would paint one unit in its entirety, to show the size. Then they would show many commanders to indicate how many units were engaged. That is, the size of the army was the first number times the second.
The Egyptians also “hieratical scale” which uses the size of figures to indicate their importance. So the commanders would be larger than the soldiers, and the victorious army would be represented with larger figures than the losers. This is clearly a graphic representation of qualitative data.
Anyway, the example of the map of Napoleon’s march is a famous example from the excellent book “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte. It goes into many aspects of the history and design of graphical info. Quite an excellent read.
But I’ll dispute that this goes back merely as far as cartesian coordinates and Descartes. Yes, there were many ways of representing info graphically, I recall seeing clay tablets incised with little lines of pictograms indicating the quantity of items being counted, I think they were Sumerian or something. And I’ve seen knotted cords that were dug up from ancient Chinese tombs, they were the precursor to the abacus, and were the bar-charts of that era. I used to go through tons of this stuff on a Japanese website but alas it went offline. That would have answered a lot of this question.
Yep, I’ll stick with the paleolithic origin. As far back as they can find artifacts, mankind has been making graphic representations of numbers. I recall seeing a picture of a prehistoric bone knotched with a stone blade, like someone who puts notches in their gun handle.