Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary

Howard Wainer is Distinguished Research Scientist for the National Board of Medical Examiners and Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of fifteen previous books, most recently, Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and other Vsual Adventures (Princeton University Press, 2005). Ian Spence is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. His current research includes experimentation in human-computer interaction and visual memory. He is the author of over 100 research articles and monographs.

'William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and his Statistical Breviary are among the most important works in the entire history of statistical graphics and data visualization. Here we find the origin of the modern graphical forms most widely used today - the pie chart, line graph and bar chart - and Playfair used these with great skill to make his (largely economic) data 'speak to the eyes'. Spence and Wainer have done a great service to all those interested in visual information display and its history …'. Michael Friendly, York University

• Introduction Howard Wainer and Ian Spence; The Commercial and Political Alas; The Statistical Breviary.