William Playfair

William Playfair (September 22, 1759 - February 11, 1823) a Scottish engineer and political economist, was an important inventor of statistical graphics.

Playfair argued that charts communicated better than tables of data. He has been credited with inventing the bar chart and the pie chart, and his time series plots are still presented as models of clarity. He first published The Commerical and Political Atlas in 1786, in London. It contained 43 time series plots and one bar chart, a form apparently introduced in this work. It has been described as the first major work to contain statistical graphs. The third edition appeared in 1801. Playfair's Statistical Breviary, published in London in 1801, contains what Tufte (2001) claims is the first pie chart.

Life

Spence & Wainer (in Statisticians of the Centuries) describe Playfair as "engineer, political economist and scoundrel" while "Eminent Scotsmen" calls him an "ingenious mechanic and miscellaneous writer." It compares his career with the glorious one of his older brother John Playfair, the distinguished Edinburgh professor, and draws a moral about the importance of "steadiness and consistency of plan" as well as of "genius."

William was the fourth son of the Reverend James Playfair of the parish of Liff & Benvie near the City of Dundee, Scotland. The Reverend James died when William was small and his education was "superintended" by his brother John. William's career as an engineer took him from working for James Watt as draftsman and personal assistant to making inventions. He spent an eventful time in Paris, taking part in the storming of the Bastille. In London he opened a "security bank" which failed. He was a prolific writer from an early age and in the latter part of his life supported himself by writing. (The works for which he is now famous are not mentioned in the obituary and they only began to be appreciated in the twentieth century.)

Resources and External links

• "Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen"

• Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization 1700-1799 See 1786.

• Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization 1800-1849 See 1801.

• Playfair, William, 1786, The Commercial and Political Atlas: Representing, by Means of Stained Copper-Plate Charts, the Progress of the Commerce, Revenues, Expenditure and Debts of England during the Whole of the Eighteenth Century

• Spence, Ian and Howard Wainer (2001), William Playfair, in Statisticians of the Centuries (C.C. Heyde and E. Seneta, eds.), pp. 105-110. Springer, New York.

• Playfair's Charts, revisited

• Spence, Ian and Howard Wainer, 1997, "Who Was Playfair?" Chance 10, pp. 35-37.

• Tufte, Edward R., 2001, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (Chesire, CT: Graphics Press)