PLAYFAIR, William.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Commercial and Political Atlas, representing, by means of stained copper-plate charts, the exports, imports, and general Trade of England; First edition; a new method of displaying statistical data. Playfair's Atlas is a revolutionary examination of English trade during the 18th century, representing economic data primarily through time-series charts, using line, area, and bar charts."For Playfair, graphics were preferable to tables because graphics showed the shape of data in a comparative perspective. Time-series plots did this" (Tufte, pp. 32-33). Contrasting his new graphical method with the tabular presentation of data, Playfair noted that "a man who has carefully investigated a printed table finds, when done, that he has only a very faint and partial idea of what he has read... On inspecting any one of these charts attentively, a sufficiently distinct impression will be made, to remain unimpaired for a considerable time, and the idea which does remain will be simple and complete, at once including the duration and the amount" (p. xiv). Playfair believed that the advantages of using statistical diagrams included ease of interpretation, efficiency of learning, and visual appeal; his charts consequently employ hachure, shading, and colour coding to attract the reader's attention.From the library of Calgarth Park, from 1788 the home of Richard Watson (1737-1816), bishop of Llandaff and, from 1782, a member of the House of Lords, with extensive manuscript marginalia in i

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.