Sunday 13 May 2012

Strand Magazine data presentations from 1906

The size of the people in each picture is proportional to some relevant statistic, usually their number in the population. Someone needs to create the R package for this.


Sports

Most popular authors in Britain, based on library borrowings.
From left to right: Thomas Hardy, Miss Braddon, Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, Rudyard Kipling, Mrs Humphry Ward, J. M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stanley Weyman, R. L. Stevenson, W. M. Thackeray, Scott, Dickens, Henry James, Charotte Bronte, George Meredith, Trollope, Charles Kingsley, Bulwer Lyttton, I. Zangwill, Charles Reade and E. F. Benson.


World religions by number of adherents: Brahminism (=Hinduism) 223m, Protestantism 210m, Ancestor worship 283m, Buddhism 107m, Catholicism 353m, Taoism 40m, Islam 222m, Judaism 9m, Parseeism 150,000, Shintoism 18m, Polytheism 130m

Female occupations in the United Kingdom: 
Dressmakers 903,646; Mill-hands 867,259; Shop-girls 325,000; Domestic Servants 1,641,154. In the foreground are laundresses, charwomen, teachers, sick nurses, shopkeepers and landladies. On the table: actresses, musicians and authors (1,327).

1 comment:

  1. I think Tufte might have cited these as an example of how visual depictions can distort relative magnitudes.

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