Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary [Hardcover]

This full colour reproduction, with new explanatory information, makes Playfair's wisdom widely available for the first time in centuries.A scientific revolution began at the end of the 18th century with the invention and popularization of the graphic display of data by the remarkable Scot William Playfair. His marvelous Atlas showed how much could be learned if one plotted data at atheoretically and looked for suggestive patterns. Those patterns provide evidence, albeit circumstantial, on which to build new science. This full color reproduction of two of his classic works, with new explanatory material, makes Playfair's wisdom widely available for the first time in two centuries.A scientific revolution began at the end of the 18th century with the invention and popularization of the graphic display of data by the remarkable Scot William Playfair. His marvelous Atlas showed how much could be learned if one plotted data at atheoretically and looked for suggestive patterns. Those patterns provide evidence, albeit circumstantial, on which to build new science. This full color reproduction of two of his classic works, with new explanatory material, makes Playfair's wisdom widely available for the first time in two centuries.A scientific revolution began at the end of the 18th century with the creation and popularization of the graphic display of data by Scottish inventor William Playfair, who introduced the line graph, bar chart, and pie chart into statistics. His remarkable Atlas demonstrated how much could be learned if one plotted data graphically and looked for suggestive patterns to provide evidence for pursuing research. In the Statistical Breviary, Playfair invented the pie chart and expanded upon this concept to facilitate the comparison of the resources of European countries. Playfair's work has great relevance to contemporary science, but finding copies of his original versions is very difficult. This re-issuance of two of his classic works, with new explanatolc-