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Today we just use the browser or a projector. I love the comment “each leaf may be easily carried to a desk when additional points are to be plotted on the curves”
Brinton was ahead of his time. In designing the chart above, he wanted to acknowledge the engaging power of illustration but preserve accuracy.
If you’ve seen charts like this before, it’s because they are almost identical to the Isotype “pioneered” in the 1930s by Otto Neurath.
Brinton’s motivation was to avoid these kinds of pitfalls:
The charts existed in 1914, but the name’s hadn’t been applied. Here’s a Shotgun chart (p201). Wouldn’t it have been more fun if we’d stuck with that instead of scatterplot?
In 1914, the horror of pie charts was known, even if they hadn’t been named yet:
While Brinton was passionate about getting things represented accurately, he wasn’t fundamentally against a cartoon approach, such as the one above. He said
“the cartoonist style should not be broadly condemned, for it has tremendous possibilities. There is a great opportunity waiting for the man who can combine cartoon methods with accuracy of numerical statement.”
Getting this balance right is one of the bigger challenges as we come to the end of the Infographic era, and it’s still being argued.
It’s also the crux of the different between, say, Stephen Few and David McCandless. The former argues for functionality first, the latter puts beauty first. Who is right? It depends.