Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary | 
 enlarge | Author: William Playfair
Creators: Howard Wainer, Ian Spence
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $48.00
Buy New: $29.85
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 524560
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 248
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0521855543
Dewey Decimal Number: 314.09033
EAN: 9780521855549
Publication Date: September 5, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 explanatory material, allows access to his wisdom for the first time in two centuries. In full color exactly as Playfair hand-colored the original, this volume includes exact duplicates of the third edition of his classic Atlas as well as the Statistical Breviary. An additional feature is the inclusion of annotations and an extensive biography of the remarkable inventor. Howard Wainer is Distinquished Research Scientist at the National Board of Examiners and Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has a Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Princeton University. Professor Wainer is the author of fifteen previous books, most recently, Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures (2005).
Book Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Reprint of a Very Rare Book October 26, 2005
John Matlock (Winnemucca, NV)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This facsimile edition of Playfair's two books reprints the original books from two centuries ago.
In the first, the Commerical and Political Atlas he is (perhaps) the first to apply charts to illustrate financial statistics. He shows charts of the trade balance between Enaland and various other countries. Especially interesting is the chart of trade with North America as it covers the period of the american revolution. This is combined with commentary to explain why the chart looks as it does. Another chart shows the British National Debt from 1688 to 1800.
The Statistical Breviary is a set of statistics on several countries, mostly around Europe. This describes the size, population, navy (Portugal in 1800 had 18 ships from 40 to 80 guns.) and other statistics.
This book is copied from the books in the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania.
A key book May 25, 2006
Michael J. McGuffin (Toronto, Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of a few key books for anyone seriously interested in visualization or information graphics. In addition to containing Playfair's two most historically significant works, the introduction by the editors adds very significantly to the value of the book. The "introduction" is actually an extremely well researched 32-page essay, which general readers should find entertaining for the surprising biographical information on Playfair's life (for example, his relationships with James Watt and the king of France). Readers with a scholarly interest should also be pleased with the introduction's discussion of the few historical precedents and inspirations for Playfair's creation or inventive use of line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, circle charts, Venn diagrams (before John Venn was born) and what today would be called glyphs. Although it would be nice if the introduction contained more pictures of historically related graphics by Playfair and others, there is a list of references included that readers can track down for related information and graphics, including many articles freely downloadable from Spence's personal website.
Following the introduction are high quality colour reproductions of Playfair's Atlas and Breviary, which are over 200 years old and otherwise only available in rare book collections. Readers can thus own a piece of history with this volume, and reading Playfair's original text yields some insight into his thinking.
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