Famous old charts rebuilt in code so you can see how they work, and a shelf of modern work by other people on the same themes.
Famous old charts, all out of copyright, rebuilt here in code so you can see how they were put together.
Her polar-area "coxcomb" showed that the great blue wedges — soldiers killed by preventable disease in the Crimean War — dwarfed the red of battle wounds. Area, not radius, carries the count.
One of the first charts made to change policy. Sanitation reforms followed.
About the original →The width of the band is the size of the army; tan advancing on Moscow, black in retreat, with the freezing temperature traced below. 422,000 marched out. 10,000 came home.
Tufte called it perhaps the best statistical graphic ever drawn: six variables on one flat page.
About the original →Each mark is a cholera death. Plotted on a street map of Soho, they swarm around a single water pump — the evidence that cholera travelled through water, not "bad air".
An early landmark in epidemiology: the map pointed to the source, and the pump was shut off.
About the original →For the 1900 Paris Exposition, Du Bois hand-drew dozens of radical, modernist charts of Black American life. This spiral — rising property values against the odds — is rebuilt in his palette.
Charts made as an argument for dignity, decades ahead of their design time.
See the originals (Library of Congress) →Modern work on the same themes, by other people. We can't reprint it, so each card links to the original. Filter by topic.
