2a:Ta56,# Classic Research in Data Visualization ## [Talk](https://youtu.be/sJbPyCLaUG8?t=11468) • [Slides](https://www.tophtucker.com/classic-research/slides.html) I’ve been very happy, working in data visualization, that it’s more inclusive than some fields, less credentialed, more collaborative. You don’t need a doctoral adviser to post groundbreaking work, and citations on Twitter aren’t refereed. But my casual on-the-job vernacular learning (mostly from links people tweet) does leave me ignorant of some of the formal strains of thought that led to what I take for granted. So I find myself jealous of people with an academic curriculum to follow! One of my favorite things about learning D3 after college was that it digested academia and passed it along in a more palatable form. For me, browsing blocks and blog posts, Mike Bostock’s incidental citations of classic research (on the validity of a transition, or the origins of an algorithm, or the uniformity of the perception of a scale) were readable to the newcomer, but also offered a path to deeper formal understanding. They transcend implementation to situate your banal work in a lineage of centuries. Having no academic background here myself, I treasured these references, which might be obvious or even trite to someone who has worked through a class on the subject. Here I’m haphazardly collecting academic work that catches my eye, most of which I haven’t read. I use “Classic” to suggest old and influential, but it’s invariably a personal list, a personal “Classic”, not a canon; some just mean something to me, or were referenced once in a way I remembered. It’s also biased toward, like, novel theories of *charts’ relation to being*, as opposed to practical resources on how to get started making good charts. More practical resources are elsewhere: for one good textbook, see [Tamara Munzner’s](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~tmm/vadbook/); for essays on modern best practices, see [Lisa Charlotte Muth’s](https://lisacharlottemuth.com/); for a more comprehensive and methodical survey of specifically perceptual research, see [Kennedy Elliott’s](https://medium.com/@kennelliott/39-studies-about-human-perception-in-30-minutes-4728f9e31a73#.yblt9atje); for popular reference manuals, see [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15527130011), I guess. I’ve organized only by chronology, mixing fields from statistics to software to psychology. Anyone who knew better would not begin to try to enumerate the items that belong in such an ill-constrained set, so this cannot be comprehensive, but I have enjoyed putting it in order.2b:T446,**De Analemmata** _Ptolemy 2nd century_ >In 1994, [Frederick Sawyer wrote](https://sundialsoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/bulletins/B1994/Bull094-2.pdf#page=2): “Early in the second century AD, Claudius Ptolemaeus wrote _De Analemmata_, a more detailed presentation of a method for projecting the principal circles of the celestial sphere onto a plane — the projection being from a point at an infinite distance along a line perpendicular to that plane. After describing the coordinate system resulting from his projection, Ptolemy presented two distinct methods for determining the coordinates; one method was trigonometric, the other was nomographic — basically, he invented an instrument. This instrument — Ptolemy’s analemma — was composed of two pieces: a carpenter’s square and a plate of wood or metal with inscribed scales and curves. It allowed one to read values of coordinates directly from the analemma diagram by use of the carpenter’s square as a straight-edge. The analemma is thus also _an instrument which implements a graphical procedure._”2c:T4b8,**[Gonville and Caius College, MS 190/223](https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GONVILLE-AND-CAIUS-00190-00223/13)** _c. 1200_ >Booklet (“libellus”) of diagrams by an unknown illustrator, prepended to manuscript of texts by John Arderne (1307–1392), arguably one of the first surgeons in England, on treating anal fistulas. “The nine full-page images are among the earliest anatomical figures in Western Europe, representations of Galen’s nine systems of the body (veins, arteries, bones, nerves, muscles, male reproductive system, stomach and abdominal organs, female reproductive system and brain and ocular system). Each system is drawn on its own folio with relevant descriptive pseudo-Galenic text and captions surrounding or within the diagrams themselves. This is the second appearance of the first five diagrams—known as the Five-Figure Series—featuring squatting human figures upon which the veins, arteries, bones, nerves and muscles are patterned. It is the first time the second four diagrams, which feature up-close, abstracted representations of organs, appear.” [Via](https://x.com/ETreharne/status/1796212637451407803), [via](https://x.com/rsnous/status/1796509016971157689).2d:T593,**Tractatus de figuratione potentiarum et mensurarum** *Nicole Oresme 14th century* > Abridged reproductions [survive](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oresme,_Nicole_-_1486_-_Tractatus_de_latitudinibus_formarum_-_diagrams.jpg), depicting the intensity of qualities like heat by a *latitudo* erected perpendicular to a base representing *longitudo*. Influenced the “Merton School” or “[Oxford calculators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Calculators)”; Clifford Truesdell, wrote: “The now published sources prove to us, beyond contention, that the main kinematical properties of uniformly accelerated motions, still attributed to Galileo by the physics texts, were discovered and proved by scholars of Merton college… In principle, the qualities of Greek physics were replaced, at least for motions, by the numerical quantities that have ruled Western science ever since. The work was quickly diffused into France, Italy, and other parts of Europe. Almost immediately, Giovanni di Casale and Nicole Oresme found how to represent the results by geometrical graphs, introducing the connection between geometry and the physical world that became a second characteristic habit of Western thought.” (Via [Darius Bacon](https://twitter.com/abecedarius/status/1482060516776423426); [more](https://macrotypography.blogspot.com/2018/05/early-physics.html), [more](https://www.jstor.org/stable/25642123).)2e:T439,**[Charting Statistics](https://archive.org/details/ChartingStatistics_201801/page/n177/mode/2up)** _Mary Eleanor Spear 1952_ >Introduces the modern form of the box plot, as what Spear called a “range bar”. Kenneth Haemer had introduced(?) the range bar [in 1948](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.1948.10501576) as a simple bar extending from the minimum to maximum value. He showed variations also plotting an average over the bar, but it was Spear who showed, among several variations of her own, a version with the median (by a vertical line), the interquartile range (by a box), and the full extent (by a horizontal line) — the modern box plot. In 1977 John Tukey standardized that version as the “box-and-whiskers plot”, with a variation plotting outliers as dots. [In 1990](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3545420?origin=crossref) Edward Tufte proposed variations that increase the data-ink ratio. (For history see [also](http://www.sci.utah.edu/~kpotter/publications/potter-2006-MPSI.pdf), [also](https://vita.had.co.nz/papers/boxplots.pdf).)2f:T66a,**[Philosophical Investigations](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf)** *Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953* > ‘§430. “Put a ruler against this body; it does not say that the body is of such-and-such a length. Rather is it in itself — I should like to say — dead, and achieves nothing of what thought achieves.” — It is as if we had imagined that the essential thing about a living man was the outward form. Then we made a lump of wood in that form, and were abashed to see the stupid block, which hadn’t even any similarity to a living being. §431. “There is a gulf between an order and its execution. It has to be filled by the act of understanding.” “Only in the act of understanding is it meant that we are to do THIS. The *order* — why, that is nothing but sounds, ink-marks.” §432. Every sign *by itself* seems dead. *What* gives it life? — In use it is *alive*. Is life breathed into it there? — Or is the *use* its life? §454. How does it come about that this arrow → *points*? Doesn’t it seem to carry in it something besides itself? — “No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that.” — That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it. This pointing is not a hocus-pocus which can be performed only by the soul. §456. We want to say: “When we mean something, it’s like going up to someone, it’s not having a dead picture (of any kind).” We go up to the thing we mean.’30:T7b3,**Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue** *Walter Ong 1958 * >On the influence of the 16th century French logician Peter Ramus (“desperate man… erudite pedagogue”), who thought Aristotle was insufficiently systematic and liked printing textbooks with lots of charts and tables organizing all the arts until he was stabbed at prayer in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Before Gutenberg, Ong writes, “more elaborate diagrams or charts could not be so perpetuated, for they were too difficult to reproduce in quantity…. All this was changed with printing. The most elaborate sort of displays had only to be set up once in type to yield an indefinite number of reproductions, all exactly like one another.” Centuries later, “We are today more than ever witnesses of attempts to reduce everything supplied by the other senses to charts and tables which can be visually assimilated.… An oscillograph of a sound gives everything about the sound — except the sound itself.” Ong concludes: “the Ramist reworking of dialectic and rhetoric furthered the elimination of sound and voice from man’s understanding of the intellectual world and helped create within the human spirit itself the silences of a spatialized universe.” ${"" /* “...Ramism might seem merely quaint, perhaps artistically lethal, but of no great importance. Yet its great spread will hardly allow us to regard it as educationally insignificant. As a matter of fact, it has educational significance of the headiest sort, for it implies no less than that it is the "arts" or curriculum subjects which hold the world together. Nothing is accessible for ‘use,’ that is, for active intussusception (the assimilation of new material and its dispersal among preexistent matter) by the human being, until it has first been put through the curriculum. The schoolroom is by implication the doorway to reality, and indeed the only doorway.” —Ramist Classroom Procedure */}31:T5a2,**[Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers](https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=numerical.methods.for.scientists.and.engineers_2ed_hamming_0486652416.pdf)** *Richard Hamming 1962 * > “Numerical methods use numbers to simulate mathematical processes, which in turn usually simulate real-world situations. This implies that there is a purpose behind the computing. To cite the motto of the book, The Purpose of Computing Is Insight, Not Numbers. This motto is often thought to mean that the numbers from a computing machine should be read and used, but there is much more to the motto. The choice of the particular formula, or algorithm, influences not only the computing but also how we are to understand the results when they are obtained. The way the computing progresses, the number of iterations it requires, or the spacing used by a formula, often sheds light on the problem. Finally, the same computation can be viewed as coming from different models, and these different views often shed further light on the problem. Thus computing is, or at least should be, intimately bound up with both the source of the problem and the use that is going to be made of the answers—it is not a step to be taken in isolation from reality.” Hamming is also concerned with avoidance of roundoff, truncation error due to approximating an infinite process, and the feedback and stability of errors. 32:T49d,**[Tidier Drawings of Trees](https://reingold.co/tidier-drawings.pdf)** *Edward M. Reingold, John S. Tilford 1981* > Proposes the algorithm used by [d3.tree](https://github.com/d3/d3-hierarchy/blob/main/README.md#tree) (e.g. [here](https://observablehq.com/@d3/tree)) to produce compact visualizations of hierarchical trees. The authors take three aesthetic criteria developed by [Wetherell and Shannon](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.150.4061&rep=rep1&type=pdf) (1979) and add a fourth. Aesthetic 1: “Nodes at the same level of the tree should lie along a straight line, and the straight lines defining the levels should be parallel.” Aesthetic 2: “A left son should be positioned to the left of its father and a right son to the right.” Aesthetic 3: “A father should be centered over its sons.” Aesthetic 4: “A tree and its mirror image should produce drawings that are reflections of one another; moreover, a subtree should be drawn the same way regardless of where it occurs in the tree.” The version used by D3 was improved to run in linear time by [Buchheim _et al._](http://dirk.jivas.de/papers/buchheim02improving.pdf) (2002).33:T5ac,**[The Information Visualizer, an Information Workspace](https://research.tableau.com/sites/default/files/p181-card.pdf)** *Stuart K. Card, George G. Robertson, Jock D. Mackinlay 1991* >Starting with observations about the cost structure of information retrieval. 1. “Organizing the parts of a system hierarchically often improves the quantity of information processed relative to processing cost.” 2. “The cost of accessing information often varies radically both because of the cost of finding it and because of the cost of assimilating it.” 3. “The processing of information exhibits locality of reference. That is, over a small time interval, references to information are not uniformly distributed throughout the corpus, but tend to be concentrated in a subset, called the working set.” 4. “Information use defines clusters of information used repeatedly to perform some task. The processing of information tends to establish locality of reference in one cluster, then jump to another cluster. Some information may participate in more than one cluster.” 5. “Information systems tend to adjust themselves to maximize (or sometimes minimize) the quantify of information processed relative to some processing cost constraint.” 6. “Lower levels of an information processing system simplify and organize information, supplying higher centers with aggregated forms of information through abstraction and selective omission.”34:T423,**[Trellis Graphics User’s Manual](http://ml.stat.purdue.edu/stat695t/writings/trellis.user.pdf)** *Richard A. Becker, William S. Cleveland 1996* > Sixty years after agronomists collected barley yield data from various midwestern farms, statisticians working on the Trellis Graphics software found an apparent error in the data by visualizing it, as documented in section 1.1 of their manual, “Discovering the Morris Mistake”. Cited in Ben Welsh’s notebook [The Morris Mistake](https://next.observablehq.com/@palewire/the-morris-mistake), which nicely summarizes the history (including [recent](https://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2014/07/theres-no-mistake-in-the-barley-data.html) [arguments](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.2013.801783) that it was not an error), and in [these Altair docs](https://altair-viz.github.io/gallery/beckers_barley_trellis_plot.html); see also Becker and Cleveland’s [The Visual Design and Control of Trellis Display](https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs448b/papers/becker-trellis-jcgs.pdf).35:T45b,**[Hypothetical Outcome Plots Outperform Error Bars and Violin Plots for Inferences About Reliability of Variable Ordering](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/hops/)** *Jessica Hullman, Paul Resnick, Eytan Adar 2015* > Hypothetical outcome plots depict a distribution by flickering among sampled values, making them, it seems to me, among the first graphical forms that could only be rendered on a dynamic display. (Notably, they are dynamic but not _interactive_. And they are not exactly an animation of a pre-existing static form; a still snapshot would not itself be a valid representation of the data — it is _inextricably_ time-varying. Nor is it quite like a 3D graphic, where a dynamic display allows an analogy to 3D space by rotation.) See also the animated [blog post](https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/hypothetical-outcomes-plots-experiencing-the-uncertain-b9ea60d7c740), cited work in [the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/upshot/how-not-to-be-misled-by-the-jobs-report.html?_r=0), and [Hullman’s other work on uncertainty](http://users.eecs.northwestern.edu/~jhullman/).36:Tdb7,--- ## Too new to be classic yet I love lots of work people are doing right now, but I want separate it from the historical survey because “hearing about something old” and “hearing about something new” are such different sampling methods. So I’ll put newer stuff here as I hear about it. - [Monte Carlo Geometry Processing: A Grid-Free Approach to PDE-Based Methods on Volumetric Domains](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/MonteCarloGeometryProcessing/index.html), Rohan Sawhney, Keenan Crane, 2020 - [A perceptual color space for image processing: The Oklab color space](https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/), Björn Ottosson, 2020 - [Measuring Fairness](https://pair.withgoogle.com/explorables/measuring-fairness/) and other [explorables](https://pair.withgoogle.com/explorables/), Adam Pearce, 2020 - [B2: Bridging Code and Interactive Visualization in Computational Notebooks](http://vis.csail.mit.edu/pubs/b2), Yifan Wu, Joseph M. Hellerstein, Arvind Satyanarayan, 2020 - [Penrose: From Mathematical Notation to Beautiful Diagrams](https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/media/Penrose_SIGGRAPH2020a.pdf), Katherine Ye, Wode Ni, Max Krieger, Dor Ma’ayan, Jenna Wise, Jonathan Aldrich, Jonathan Sunshine, and Keenan Crane, 2020. - [Exploring Visual Information Flows in Infographics](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376263?casa_token=5He3dOJhkqwAAAAA:9U-jpTofCHzHxxjpO4QC0f9-gwX8R89TEDdMPqqxSp4RYnkW4zEX_qtENpl8O1DIdbWNns8EMs3aRA), Min Lu, Chufeng Wang, Joel Lanir, Nanxuan Zhao, Hanspeter Pfister, Daniel Cohen-Or, and Hui Huang, 2020 - [Data Feminism](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044004/data-feminism/), Catherine D’Ignazio, Lauren F. Klein, 2020 - [Observable Plot](https://observablehq.com/plot/what-is-plot), Mike Bostock, Philippe Rivière, 2021 - [Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online](http://vis.csail.mit.edu/pubs/viral-visualizations), Crystal Lee, Tanya Yang, Gabrielle Inchoco, Graham M. Jones, Arvind Satyanarayan, 2021 - [When Graphs Are a Matter of Life and Death](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/21/when-graphs-are-a-matter-of-life-and-death), Hannah Fry, 2021 - [The Science of Visual Data Communication: What Works](https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/10.1177%2F15291006211051956-FREE/full), Steven L. Franconeri, Lace M. Padilla, Priti Shah, Jeffrey M. Zacks, and Jessica Hullman, 2021 - [Untidy Data: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Tables](https://research.tableau.com/sites/default/files/untidy-preprint.pdf), Lyn Bartram, Michael Correll, Melanie Tory, 2021 - [3D Gaussian Splatting](https://repo-sam.inria.fr/fungraph/3d-gaussian-splatting/), Bernhard Kerbl, Georgios Kopanas, Thomas Leimkühler, George Drettakis, 2023 - [Unraveling the Truth: Do VLMs really Understand Charts? A Deep Dive into Consistency and Robustness](https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2407.11229v2), Srija Mukhopadhyay, Adnan Qidwai, Aparna Garimella, Pritika Ramu, Vivek Gupta, Dan Roth, 2024 - [Minkowski Penalties: Robust Differentiable Constraint Enforcement for Vector Graphics](https://minarcik.com/minkowski-penalties/MinkowskiPenalties.pdf), Jiří Minarčík, Sam Estep, Wode Ni, Keenan Crane, 2024 - [DracoGPT](https://idl.uw.edu/papers/dracogpt), Will (Huichen) Wang, Mitchell Gordon, Leilani Battle, Jeffrey Heer, 2025 - [Same Quality Metrics, Different Graph Drawings](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.15557), Simon van Wageningen, Tamara Mchedlidze, Alexandru C. Telea, 202537:T17b0,--- ## Partial index of authors - *[William Playfair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Playfair)* (1759–1823), Scottish political economist credited with pioneering statistical graphics - *[Charles Joseph Minard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard)* (1781–1870), French civil engineer and pioneer of the flow map of Napoleon’s march - *[Florence Nightingale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale)* (1820–1910), English nurse whose reports on the Crimean War included pioneering graphics - *[Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henry_Phineas_Riall_Sankey)* (1853–1926), Irish ship captain and pioneer of the Sankey diagram - *[Albert H. Munsell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Henry_Munsell)* (1858–1918), Boston painter whose three-dimensional color system methodically mapped visual perception - *[Georges Voronoï](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Voronoy)* (1868–1908), Ukrainian mathematician and pioneer of the Voronoi diagram - *[Mary Eleanor Spear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Eleanor_Spear)* (1897–1986), American statistical graphic analyst and pioneer of the box plot - *[S. S. Stevens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Smith_Stevens)* (1906–1973), American psychologist and psychoacoustician - *[Darrell Huff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Huff)* (1913–2001), American author of _How to Lie with Statistics_ and tobacco lobbyist - *[John W. Tukey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tukey)* (1915–2000), American statistician who introduced the Fast Fourier Transform and the box plot; brother-in-law of Anscombe - *[Jacques Bertin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Bertin)* (1918–2010), French cartographer who originated the grammar of graphics - *[Frank Anscombe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Anscombe)* (1918–2001), English statistician who introduced Anscombe’s quartet; brother-in-law of Tukey - *[George A. Miller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armitage_Miller)* (1920–2012), American psychologist and pioneer of cognitive psychology - *[Edward H. Simpson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Simpson)* (1922–2019), British codebreaker who described Simpson’s paradox - *[Paul Baran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran)* (1926–2011), Polish–American engineer and inventor of packet switching - *[John P. Snyder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Snyder)* (1926–1997), American cartographer for the USGS - *[Anne Treisman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Treisman)* (1935–2018), English psychologist who pioneered feature integration theory of preattentive and focused attention stages in visual processing - *[Ian Hacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hacking)* (1936–), Canadian analytic philosopher who, after Foucault, turned to study the statistics of the 19th century - *[Peter J. Bickel](https://bickel.stat.berkeley.edu/)* (1940–), American statistician, U.C. Berkeley professor who found Simpson’s paradox in their admissions data - *[Edward Tufte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte)* (1942–), American student of Tukey - *[Stuart Card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Card)* (1943–), American HCI researcher at Xerox PARC - *[William S. Cleveland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Cleveland)* (1943–), American professor at Purdue University, pioneer of “trellis” graphics (like faceting) - *[Leland Wilkinson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Wilkinson)* (1945–2021), American statistician and author of *The Grammar of Graphics*, former VP of Statistics at Tableau - *[Bruno Latour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour)* (1947–2022), French philosopher - *[Ben Shneiderman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shneiderman)* (1947–), American professor of computer science at the University of Maryland who pioneered direct manipulation and treemaps - *[Edwin Hutchins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hutchins)* (1948–), American cognitive ethnographer - *[Jock Mackinlay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_D._Mackinlay)* (1952–), American student of Card; having been on Chris Stolte’s dissertation committee, now VP of R&D at Tableau - *[Pat Hanrahan](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~hanrahan/)* (1954–), American computer graphics researcher, founding employee at Pixar, doctoral advisor of Chris Stolte at Stanford, cofounder with him of Tableau - *[Andrew Gelman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Gelman)* (1965–), American statistician - *[Tamara Munzner](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~tmm/)* (1969–), American–Canadian student of Hanrahan whose dissertation used hyperbolic geometry to visualize large graphs - *[Maneesh Agrawala](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~maneesh/)* (1972–), American student of Hanrahan - *[Jeffrey Heer](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jheer/)* (1979–), American student of Agrawala; professor of computer science at Stanford and University of Washington - *[Hadley Wickham](http://hadley.nz/)* (1979–), American student of Diane Cook, developer of ggplot2 - *[Mike Bostock](https://bost.ocks.org/mike)*, American student of Heer - *[Kennedy Elliot](https://www.oblio.co/)*, American journalist - *[Jessica Hullman](http://users.eecs.northwestern.edu/~jhullman/)*, American professor at Northwestern - *[Sean Kandel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Kandel)*, American student of Heer, cofounder of Trifacta - *[Arvind Satyanarayan](https://arvindsatya.com/)*, American student of Heer, MIT professor, creator of Vega and Vega-Lite - *[Chris Stolte](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~cstolte/)*, American student of Hanrahan, author of Polaris dissertation, co-founder of Tableau - *[Diane Tang](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dtang/)*, American student of Hanrahan, co-author of Polaris papers - *[Archie Tse](https://www.nytimes.com/by/archie-tse)*, American journalist, Graphics Director of the New York Times, commonly depicted around the city receiving a Heimlich maneuver - *[Bret Victor](http://worrydream.com/)*, American synth engineer38:[] 28:{"title":"Classic Research in Data Visualization","cells":[{"id":0,"value":"$2a","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1462,"value":"---\n## Before Christ","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1998,"value":"**[Schøyen MS 3047](https://www.schoyencollection.com/mathematics-collection/arithmetics/earliest-mathematical-text-ms-3047)** \n_Shuruppak, present-day Iraq \n27th century BC_\n\n>Once upon a time, the gods decided to send a flood to destroy mankind, according to a tablet later excavated in Nippur; it was Ziusudra, ruler of Shuruppak, on the banks of the Euphrates, whom they instructed to build a large boat. And it was in that city that an unknown expedition, possibly the one by the German Oriental Society in 1902, later excavated a table of three columns and seven rows, with numerical markings in the cells, thought to represent a multiplication table for the areas of rectangles with various sides. ([See also](https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-clay-tablets-from-sumer), [also](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485), [also](https://www.schoyencollection.com/special-collections-introduction/mathematics-collection).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1468,"value":"**[Nippur cubit-rod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit)** \n*Nippur, present-day Iraq \n26th century BC*\n\n> You don’t necessarily need to measure space, to divide it by some fixed standard, to visualize it. But it is a standard property of many visualizations today. This copper rod would today be called 20.42 inches long; at the time, it would have been called one cubit — or at least, so speculates Eckhard Unger, who discovered it in 1916. Its subdivisions are highly irregular; more regular and precise cubit-rods were found in Egyptian tombs dating back to something more like the 14th century BC.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1466,"value":"**[Babylonian Map of the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World)** \n*Sippar, present-day Iraq \n6th century BC*\n\n> Every visualization can be imagined as a map of some abstract space, and I suppose it makes sense that maps of the concrete space we see and walk through predate the others by many centuries. One of the earliest known “world” maps ([see others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps)) shows Babylon, split by the Euphrates, and several surrounding regions and cities, encircled by a river or ocean. Excavated by Hormuzd Rassam in the 19th century and acquired by the British Museum; [learn more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUxFzh8r384&t=1s) from Irving Finkel.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2569,"value":"**Elements** \n_Euclid \n3rd century BC_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1933,"value":"**Geographika** \n_Eratosthenes \n3rd century BC_\n\n>Introduced system of latitude and longitude, presaging later coordinate systems (like the flat and abstract “latitude and longitude” of Oresme, sixteen centuries later). No copies of the three-volume text survive. Eratosthenes studied under Callimachus, pioneer of alphabetical order, and became chief librarian of the Library of Alexandria. He estimated the circumference of the Earth to be 252,000 stadia, which is off by somewhere around –2.4% (assuming 155 meters per stadion) or +0.8% (assuming 160). Geographika was later criticized by Strabo’s 1st century BC text of the same name.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2563,"value":"**Tangencies** \n_Apollonius of Perga \n3rd century BC_\n\n>A lost work that poses and solves the problem of how to find a circle tangent to three others, now known as [Apollonius’s problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_Apollonius) — a precursor to circle-packing visualization.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2264,"value":"---\n## Late Antiquity","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2254,"value":"$2b","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2468,"value":"**Tree of Porphyry** \n_Porphyry \n3rd century_\n\n>A taxonomical device by the neoplatonist. It seems it was originally specified in words, but was later adapted to diagrams.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1636,"value":"---\n## Middle Ages\n\n","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1652,"value":"**Great Stemma** \n*5th–11th century?*\n\n> A network diagram, or family tree, depicting the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The earliest surviving graphical manuscripts date from the Iberian peninsula in the 11th century but (to Jean-Baptiste Piggin) seemed to suggest a common ancestor, a sibling of the textual Liber Genealogus, which dates to the 5th century. [Paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256374734_The_Great_Stemma_a_Late_Antique_Diagrammatic_Chronicle_of_Pre-Christian_Time); [information](https://macrotypography.blogspot.com/search/label/Stemma) about the [manuscripts](http://www.piggin.net/gsEdition/gs06Manuscripts.htm); an [11th-century manuscript](https://nltaylor.net/sketchbook/archives/1577); a [12th-century manuscript](https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10544541n/f14.image). More on [early family trees](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/over-3000-years-of-humans-exaggerating-their-lineage-on-family-trees).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2022,"value":"**Quipu** \n_Andes region \n6th–16th century?_\n\n>Knotted strings used to encode information by the Cusco, by the later Inca, and possibly by others thousands of years earlier. Knots can represent base-ten numbers, and clusters of strings could be used for accounting. Many other linguistic functions have been suggested. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu), [more](https://www.schoyencollection.com/palaeography-collection-introduction/4-8-native-american/inca/ms-718), [more](https://www.britannica.com/technology/quipu).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2395,"value":"**[Kitab al-tafhim li-awa’il sina‘at al-tanjim](https://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo-explore/fulldisplay?query=any,contains,kitab%20al-tafhim&vid=IAMS_VU2&search_scope=LSCOP_BL&sortby=rank&tab=local&docid=IAMS032-002746985&lang=en_US&mode=simple&fromRedirectFilter=true)** \n_al-Biruni \n973 – 1050?_\n\n\n>The “Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology” includes a [diagram](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_eclipse_al-Biruni.jpg) of the phases of the moon, an early time-series diagram. [Via](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1692991985219445198), [via](https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/exhibition/emerging-patterns-data-visualization-throughout-history).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2430,"value":"$2c","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2463,"value":"**Tree of Science** \n_Ramon Llull \n1295 – 1296?_\n\n>A nested taxonomy of reality represented diagrammatically as a tree by a Christian philosopher and knight from Barcelona. Its 14 top-level categories were elemental, vegetal, sensual, imaginal, human, moral, imperial, apostolic, celestial, angelic, eviternal, maternal, divine and human, and divine. See also his slightly later “tree of nature and logic”. I think inspired by the Tree of Porphyry. [Via](https://x.com/poetengineer__/status/1873619996431233508).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2266,"value":"---\n## Renaissance","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1642,"value":"$2d","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2014,"value":"**Aztec sun stone** \n_Zócalo, present-day Mexico \nc. 1502_\n\n>Represents the interlocking cycles of the Nahua calendar, derived from the Maya calendar. ([More info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_sun_stone).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1680,"value":"**[Professio regia](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_P0mB0GsKE5cC/)** \n*Peter Ramus \n1576*\n\n> Ramus attempted to organize all knowledge in elaborate bracketed diagrams, including in this textbook, the first to use “curriculum” to refer to a course of study. It was published four years after Ramus, a Huguenot, was killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. See note on Ong (1958) below.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2614,"value":"**Novum Organum Scientiarum** \n_Francis Bacon \n1620_\n\n>A response to Aristotle, almost two millennia later. I know nothing about it but it seems like the kind of thing that would set the cultural and scientific backdrop to allow such a thing as “data visualization” to exist.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2407,"value":"**Rosa Ursina** \n_Christoph Scheiner \n1630_\n\n>Shows the evolution of sunspots over time, proving Galileo correct that the sun was not a perfect unblemished globe. [Via](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1693004265126502876), [via](https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/exhibition/emerging-patterns-data-visualization-throughout-history); [more info](https://library.ethz.ch/en/locations-and-media/platforms/virtual-exhibitions/galileo-galilei/the-world-systems/rosa-ursina-sunspot-paths.html).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1688,"value":"**[La Géométrie](https://archive.org/details/lagomtrie26400gut/)** \n*René Descartes \n1637*\n\n> Contains the germ of the Cartesian coordinate system, further developed by followers in order to understand this book, especially in [Frans van Schooten’s](https://archive.org/details/ned-kbn-all-00003375-001/page/110/mode/2up) 1649 Latin translation and commentary.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2194,"value":"**[Principles of Philosophy](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_jH1UVxA6ix0C/page/n122/mode/1up)** \n_René Descartes \n1644_\n\n>Forty years before Newton’s _Principia_, Descartes proposed laws of motion — like “that each thing, as far as is in its power, always remains in the same state” — that prefigure inertia. To explain celestial orbits, he partitioned space into constantly rotating vortices, illustrated by a Voronoi diagram, 264 years before Voronoi.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1608,"value":"**[Grados de la longitud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_van_Langren#/media/File:Grados_de_la_Longitud.jpg)** \n*Michael Florent Van Langren \n1644*\n\n>Plots twelve estimates of the distance between Toledo and Rome on a single horizontal axis, ruled and labeled.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2509,"value":"**Grammatika musikiyskago peniya** \n_Nikolay Diletsky \n1677_\n\n>This “grammar of musical song” by the Russian music theorist and composer contains the first known diagram of the “circle of fifths”, a way of arranging… um… I still don’t understand. An independent version was made in 1711 by Johann David Heinichen. See also John Coltrane’s [1967 version](https://web.archive.org/web/20170413194301/https://www.openculture.com/2017/04/the-tone-circle-john-coltrane-drew-to-illustrate-the-theory-behind-his-most-famous-compositions-1967.html).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1354,"value":"---\n## 18th century","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2384,"value":"**The Passage of the Hurricane, from the Sea-side at Bexhill in Sussex, to Newingden-Level, the Twentieth Day of May 1729, Between Nine and Ten in the Evening** \n_Richard Budgen \n1729_\n\n>Maps the trail of a tornado, or “hurricane”, through towns, as collected from talking to witnesses. [Via](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1692989436408082876), [via](https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/exhibition/emerging-patterns-data-visualization-throughout-history); [more info](http://www.phenomena.org.uk/tornadoes/tornadoes/bexhill.html).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2191,"value":"**[A Chart of Biography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Chart_of_Biography)** \n_Joseph Priestley \n1765_\n\n>A graphical timeline of the lifespans of two thousand eminent people, ranging from 1200 BC to AD 1800.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1606,"value":"**Poleometric Table** \n*Charles De Fourcroy \n1782*\n\n> Draws cities as squares proportional to their geographical area. Bertin wrote: “Graphic images were first conceived… as reproductions of the visible world, which benefit from only one degree of freedom, that of the scale. One had to wait until the… eighteenth century to confirm, with Charles De Fourcroy, that the two dimensions of a sheet of paper could usefully represent something other than visible space.” August Crome made a [similar graphic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Crome#/media/File:Groessen_Karte_von_Europa,_1785.jpg) three years later.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":521,"value":"**[Commercial and Political Atlas](https://archive.org/details/PLAYFAIRWilliam1801TheCommercialandPoliticalAtlas)** \n*William Playfair \n1786*\n\n>Introduces line, area, and bar charts. His later “Statistical Breviary” (1801) introduces pie charts.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1431,"value":"---\n## 19th century","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2291,"value":"**[Adinkra cloth](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1818-1114-23)** \n_Ashanti Region, Ghana \n1817_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1541,"value":"**[Carte figurative de l’instruction populaire de la France](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_figurative_de_l%27instruction_populaire_de_la_France)** \n*Charles Dupin \n1826*\n\n> Introduces the *carte teintée*, or tinted map, showing school enrollment across France. “Dans notre carte, la noirceur des teintes correspond à la grandeur des nombres placés au-dessous du nom de chaque Département. Cette teinte et ce nombre indiquent combien il faut de personnes pour fournir un enfant mâle aux écoles. Ainsi le département de la Moselle compte un élève par dix habitants, et celui de la Haute-Loire un par 268 habitants.” John Kirtland Wright coined “choropleth” for this form in 1938.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1340,"value":"**[On the investigation of the orbits of revolving double stars](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1833MmRAS...5..171H)** \n*John Herschel \n1833*\n\n>Introduces the scatter plot, as recounted by [Michael Friendly and Daniel Denis (2005)](https://www.datavis.ca/papers/friendly-scat.pdf). But the printed version of the paper did not include the original hand-drawn plots, presumably because of the costs of engraving. Herschel writes that they were deposited with the Royal Astronomical Society; Friendly and Denis’s inquiries to the RAS failed to uncover them.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1613,"value":"**On the Mode of Communication of Cholera** \n*John Snow \n1854*","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":525,"value":"**[Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army](https://archive.org/details/b20387118)** \n*Florence Nightingale \n1857*\n\n>Introduces the coxcomb chart (though Nightingale used “coxcomb” to refer to the fold-out paper on which it was printed), a sort of radial bar chart, to show causes of death by month during the Crimean War to members of Parliament.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2027,"value":"**Marshall Islands stick charts** \n_1862_\n\n>Since the people of Micronesia had been pioneers of seafaring technology for thousands of years, it’s hard to know how long these had been in use. But in 1862, a Hawaiian missionary documented one of their methods of navigation: interlocking sticks, curved or straight, representing patterns of ocean swells, like a plot of a vector field. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands_stick_chart), [more](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2021/11/the-unique-seafaring-charts-of-the-marshall-islands/).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1309,"value":"**[Carte Figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’armée française dans la campagne de Russie 1812–1813](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minard.png)** \n*Charles Joseph Minard \n1869*\n\n> Minard drew his first flow map in 1845 to show traffic between Dijon and Mulhouse, but he’s best known for this one, of Napoleon’s disastrous march through Russia. Predates the similar but more abstract Sankey diagram by almost 30 years.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2228,"value":"**[Die Gesetzmässigkeit im Gesellschaftsleben, statistische Studien](https://archive.org/details/diegesetzmssig00mayruoft/page/78/mode/2up?ref=ol)** \n_Georg von Mayr \n1877_\n\n>Introduces what would later become known as the radar chart, and an area subdivided in two dimensions akin to a treemap (but without hierarchy). ([Via](https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1055158746165530626).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2358,"value":"**Album de Statistique Graphique** \n_Émile Cheysson \n1879_\n\n>Inspired by Minard, he published [almost 400](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/the-style-of-emile-cheysson/) maps in this series 1879 to 1906 for the French Ministry of Public Works. See for instance his [lovely color palettes](https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/cheysson-color-palettes).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2390,"value":"**[Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements](https://archive.org/details/cu31924024580353)** \n_Eadweard Muybridge \n1884_\n\n>The dawn of the moving picture.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2087,"value":"**Ammassalik wooden maps** \n_1885_\n\n>Three-dimensional maps of the Greenland coastline, carved by the native Inuit before contact with Europe.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2250,"value":"**[Regression Towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature](http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~nchristo/statistics100C/history_regression.pdf)** \n_Francis Galton \n1886_\n\n>Introduces a heatmap of the heights of parents vs. the heights of their parents to show the correlation.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1334,"value":"**[Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Evolution. II. Skew Variation in Homogeneous Material](https://zenodo.org/record/1432104)** \n*Karl Pearson \n1895*\n\n> Introduces the histogram. I’ve [written here](https://observablehq.com/@tophtucker/inferring-chart-type-from-autocorrelation-and-other-evils) about Galton, Pearson, and the early history of regression and correlation.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1319,"value":"**[The Thermal Efficiency Of Steam Engines](https://zenodo.org/record/2036163)** \n*Alex B. W. Kennedy, H. Riall Sankey \n1898*\n\n> Introduces what would become known as the [Sankey diagram](https://observablehq.com/@d3/sankey-diagram) to show steam engine efficiency, more abstract than Minard’s earlier and similar flow map.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":228,"value":"---\n## Early 20th century","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1988,"value":"**[The Exhibit of American Negroes](https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=anedub)** \n_W. E. B. Du Bois \n1900_\n\n>I think it was my old coworker Zan who said that showing the very large beside the very small is one of the fundamental challenges in data visualization. Several of Du Bois’s graphics for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris _fold_ space, bending a very long bar into a spiral to contrast it with a short one.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1266,"value":"**[Nouvelles applications des paramètres continus à la théorie des formes quadratiques](https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/download/pdf/PPN243919689_0133/LOG_0010.pdf)** ([pt 2](https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/download/pdf/PPN243919689_0134/LOG_0014.pdf)) \n*Georges Voronoï \n1908 *\n\n>Introduces the ${tex`n`}-dimensional version of what would become known as a [Voronoi diagram](https://observablehq.com/@d3/hover-voronoi): given a set of points, a partition of space into the areas for which each point is the closest one in the set. So like, [starting with all the capital cities in the world](https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/capitals/), a Voronoi diagram gives you a shape showing all the places where Washington, D.C. is the closest capital. Notably, Voronoï’s work includes no diagrams. Boris Delaunay [studied the dual](http://mi.mathnet.ru/eng/izv4937) in 1934.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":100,"value":"**[A Pigment Color System and Notation](https://books.google.com/books?id=FdQLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA236#v=onepage&q&f=false)** \n_Albert H. Munsell \n1912_ \n\n> Introduces the [Munsell color system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system). “Desire to fit a chosen contour, such as the pyramid, cone, cylinder or cube, coupled with a lack of proper tests, has led to many distorted statements of color relations, and it becomes evident, when physical measurement of pigment values and chromas is studied, that no regular contour will serve.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2618,"value":"**[Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung](https://www.gestalttheory.net/download/Wertheimer1912_Sehen_von_Bewegung.pdf)** \n_Max Wertheimer \n1912_\n\n>Translated, “Experimental Studies on Motion Vision”; laying the groundwork for the “Gestalt laws of grouping”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2377,"value":"**[Graphic methods for presenting facts](https://archive.org/details/graphicmethodsfo00brinrich)** \n_Willard C. Brinton \n1914_\n\n>An early visualization textbook. “In the preparation of this book there has been a constant effort to present the subject to suit the point of view of the business man, the social worker, and the legislator. Mathematics have been entirely eliminated.” Extended in [Graphic presentation](https://archive.org/details/graphicpresentat00brinrich) in 1939. [Via](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1692987719020863919), [via](https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/exhibition/emerging-patterns-data-visualization-throughout-history).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2624,"value":"**[Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt](https://www.gestalttheory.net/download/Wertheimer1923_Lehre_von_der_Gestalt.pdf)** \n_Max Wertheimer \n1922_\n\n>Part one covered “the general theoretical situation”; part two, the next year, covered “laws of organization in perceptual forms”. Wikipedia describes Wertheimer’s Gestalt theory as an evolution of Aristotle’s holism, the idea that a whole is more than (and different from) the sum of its parts. I can’t read the German, but I think this is what began to lay out the Gestalt [laws of grouping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_grouping). Proximity: things close together form groups. Similarity: things that look alike form groups. Closure: a broken wall still creates a sense of a room. Good continuation: when a line is broken by an overlapping line, we still see the line as whole. Common fate: when we see things moving together we think it’s for the same reason. Good form: I don’t understand this one.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1920,"value":"**[Point and Line to Plane](https://archive.org/details/pointlinetoplane00kand)** \n_Wassily Kandinsky \n1926_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2411,"value":"**[Who Shall Survive?](https://archive.org/details/whoshallsurviven00jlmo)** \n_Jacob Moreno \n1934_\n\n>Pioneers the “sociogram”, a network diagram of social relations. [Via](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1693859468432351457), [via](https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/exhibition/emerging-patterns-data-visualization-throughout-history).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2333,"value":"**Science and Sanity** \n_Alfred Korzybski \n1933_\n\n>Reprints the 1931 paper in which Korzybski introduced the epigram, “A map is _not_ the territory it represents”; he goes on, “but, if correct, it has a _similar structure_ to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” (Discussed on [p. 750 here](https://ilam3d.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/alfred-korzybksi-science-and-sanity.pdf).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1213,"value":"**[Equation, Poincare Inst., Paris.](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/46742/man-ray-equation-poincare-inst-paris-american-1934/)** \n*Man Ray \n1934*\n\n>In the 20th century, the visualization of mathematical objects got more concrete, and the visual arts got more abstract; Man Ray’s work feels like a meeting point near the middle. Introduced to me _via_ the cover of _The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny_, by Ivar Ekeland. See also his Shakespearean Equations.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2304,"value":"**Certain effects of grouping upon the size of the correlation coefficient in census tract material** \n_C. E. Gehlke, Katherine Biehl \n1934_\n\n>Introduces the [modifiable areal unit problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_problem).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2319,"value":"**[International Picture Language; the First Rules of Isotype](https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/Neurath_Otto_International_Picture_Language.pdf)** \n_Otto Neurath \n1936_\n\n>Introduces the Isotype picture language. Neurath saw his task as nothing less than “debabelization”; he wrote in either German or “Basic English”, a subset culled by Charles Kay Ogden, who said, “What the World needs most is about 1,000 more dead languages—and one more alive.” That got me thinking about the ethics and aesthetics of “cleanliness”, which reminded Omar of Mary Douglas: “Where there is dirt there is system.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2639,"value":"**Social and Functional Analysis** \n_Patrick Abercrombie, John Henry Forshaw, Arthur Ling \n1943_\n\n>The “Social and Functional Analysis” plate, developed by Abercrombie and illustrated by Ling, pioneered the “potato plan” map. Matt Khinda says: “he was describing a general plan for creating ‘new towns’ but didn’t have the authority to designate specific sites for redevelopment. So, he decided blobs would do the trick.” [More](https://nightingaledvs.com/patrick-abercrombies-the-greater-london-plan/); [more](https://www.abitare.it/en/research/publications/2019/04/05/40-cities-variations-map-abercrombie/); [via](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/d3-potato-plan/10656).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1823,"value":"**The Bull** \n_Pablo Picasso \n1945_\n\n> Jacques Barzun (2000) uses Picasso to describe the role of observation in the Middle Ages: “Observation is rarely neutral; it rests on pre-conceptions and pre-perceptions; and it was these that had to change. In fact, close observation can be a hindrance to scientific thought if it fastens too hard on outward appearances. A better way of observing consists in overlooking visible details, in _neglecting_ observation (to put it rather strongly) and in viewing objects in geometrical fashion—seeing the Rabelaisian quintessence. It is the method used in Picasso’s bull: in the series of sketches he starts lifelike—massive, glossy, beautifully drawn in every part. Then, in a dozen or so of gradual reductions, he loses one characteristic after another until, at the last, he is the bare outline of what he was at first. He is the abstract bull, the bull, so to speak, of science.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1535,"value":"**[On Exactitude in Science](https://kwarc.info/teaching/TDM/Borges.pdf)** \n*Jorge Luis Borges \n1946*","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2103,"value":"**[Location Map of South China Sea Islands](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1947_Nanhai_Zhudao.png)** \n_Yang Huairen \n1947_\n\n>This map shows an eleven-dash line, later reduced to nine, representing the People’s Republic of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, a reminder that maps do have some power over territory.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1379,"value":"---\n## 1950s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":982,"value":"**[The Interpretation of Interaction in Contingency Tables](http://math.bme.hu/~marib/bsmeur/simpson.pdf)** \n*Edward H. Simpson \n1951*\n\n> Introduces [Simpson’s paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox), though it wasn’t called that until Colin R. Blyth’s “On Simpson’s Paradox and the Sure-Thing Principle” (1972).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2131,"value":"$2e","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1561,"value":"**Some Effects of Ionizing Radiation on the Formation of Bubbles in Liquids** \n*Donald A. Glaser \n1952*\n\n> Maps are generally smaller than the territory, but visualization can also amplify the imperceptible. This half-page paper introduced a new kind of magnifying glass, a new kind of microscope: the bubble chamber, for which Glaser won a Nobel Prize. A piston expands the chamber, heating the liquid inside to just below its boiling point, teetering on the brink; particles passing through disturb the liquid, tip it to bubbling; as the chamber expands, the bubbles are magnified; a magnetic field leads charged particles to arc with radii proportionate to their masses, allowing them to be distinguished.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1510,"value":"$2f","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":518,"value":"**How to Lie with Statistics** \n*Darrell Huff \n1954*","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1776,"value":"**[The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement](http://www2.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/mordkoff/InfoProc/pdfs/Fitts%201954.pdf)** \n_Paul Morris Fitts \n1954_\n\n>Introduces Fitts’s law, popularized and applied to HCI by Card et al. in 1978.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":582,"value":"**[The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information](http://www2.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Miller%20GA%20Magical%20Seven%20Psych%20Review%201955.pdf)** \n*George A. Miller \n1955*\n\n>“When only two or three tones were used the listeners never confused them. With four different tones confusions were quite rare, but with five or more tones confusions were frequent. With fourteen different tones the listeners made many mistakes.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":608,"value":"**[On the psychophysical law](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800.5433&rep=rep1&type=pdf)** \n*S. S. Stevens \n1957*\n\n>Introduces [Stevens’s power law of perception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens%27s_power_law): “equal sensation ratios\nare produced by equal stimulus ratios”, or ${tex`\\psi (I)=kI^{a}`}, where ${tex`I`} is intensity of stimulus, ${tex`\\psi (I)`} is perceived intensity, ${tex`a`} is an experimentally derived exponent (1 for length, 0.7 for area, 0.5 for brightness), and ${tex`k`} is a proportionality constant.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1228,"value":"$30","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2039,"value":"**Outillage Méthodes Calcul (Citroen Internal Document P2108)** \n_Paul de Casteljau \n1959_ \n\n>When he arrived at Citroën, the mathematician and physicist de Casteljau wrote, “specialists admitted that all electrical, electronic and mechanical problems had more or less been solved. All — except for one single formality which made up for 5%, but certainly not for 20% of the problem; in other words, how to express component parts by equations.” In response, he took Bernstein polynomials — developed fifty years prior to prove that any continuous function can be approximated by polynomials — and applied them to computer-aided design. He was not allowed to publish his results; Pierre Bézier did much the same thing at Renault a few years later, and gave his name to Bézier curves, now ubiquitous in computer graphics for smooth and controlled interpolation between known points.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1375,"value":"---\n## 1960s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2599,"value":"**Statistics of Deadly Quarrels** \n_Lewis Fry Richardson \n1960_\n\n>From time to time someone tries to apply the language of mathematics, statistics, and data to a new domain; Richardson tried the origins of war.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1218,"value":"$31","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1980,"value":"**[Simulation of a Two-Gyro Gravity-Gradient Attitude Control System](https://techchannel.att.com/playvideo/2012/07/18/AT&T-Archives-First-Computer-Generated-Graphics-Film)** \n_Edward E. Zajac \n1963_\n\n>“This film was a specific project to define how a particular type of satellite would move through space. Edward E. Zajac made, and narrated, the film, which is considered to be possibly the very first computer graphics film ever. Zajac programmed the calculations in FORTRAN, then used a program written by Zajac’s colleague, Frank Sinden, called ORBIT. The original computations were fed into the computer via punch cards, then the output was printed onto microfilm using the General Dynamics Electronics Stromberg-Carlson 4020 microfilm recorder. All computer processing was done on an IBM 7090 or 7094 series computer.” (via [Tim Wallace](https://twitter.com/wallacetim/status/1562819655483346944))","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2586,"value":"**Spline Functions and the Problem of Graduation** \n_I. J. Schoenberg \n1964_\n\n>Introduces the term “spline” for a mathematical concept mimicking the physical “flat spline”, a thin strip of wood fixed in place at certain points and curving between them.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2054,"value":"**[PIA14032](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia14033-first-tv-image-of-mars-hand-colored)** \n_Jet Propulsion Laboratory \n1965_\n\n>When the Mariner 4 space probe flew past Mars, it transmitted image data to NASA, where a machine printed it as numbers onto strips of paper. Rather than wait for the computer-processed image, the scientists taped the strips of paper together and hand-colored them based on the numbers. Charlie Loyd calls this “_the_ bridge between thinking in pictures and thinking in pixels”. ([More info](https://www.instagram.com/p/CmsjNnXM3rc/).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2603,"value":"**[Biochemical Pathways](https://github.com/usnish/biochemical-pathways-poster/blob/master/prebuilt_hires.png)** \n_Gerhard Michal \n1965_\n\n>Maps out chemical metabolic processes in what must be among the most massive scientific diagrams ever compiled. Commonly printed as a classroom poster. Was updated by Roche for 50 years; now in [limbo](https://github.com/usnish/biochemical-pathways-poster/).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":719,"value":"**Semiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics)** \n*Jacques Bertin \n1967*\n\n>An uberseminal book I’ve hardly cracked open. Led to Wilkinson (1999) and ggplot2 (2011).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1286,"value":"**Computer Experiments on Classical Fluids** \n*Loup Verlet \n1967*\n\n>Introduces what became known as [Verlet integration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlet_integration) (though it had been used as early as 1791 by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre), which became the basis for the simulation in [d3-force](https://github.com/d3/d3-force). That combined with Peter Eades’s “A Heuristic for Graph Drawing” (1984), and Thomas M. J. Fruchterman and Edward M. Reingold’s “Graph Drawing by Force-Directed Placement” (1991), by way of libraries like Prefuse and Graphviz and eventually D3, gives us the modern popular [force-directed graph](https://observablehq.com/@d3/force-directed-graph).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2476,"value":"**Word concepts: A theory and simulation of some basic semantic capabilities** \n_M. Ross Quillian \n1967_\n\n>Includes some nice sentence diagrams, the origin of which I should investigate more. [Via](https://x.com/poetengineer__/status/1873619996431233508).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":779,"value":"**[On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character and the Role of the Engineer, or, A Little Caution in the Haste to Number](https://rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P3780.pdf)** \n*Paul Baran \n1968*\n\n>“With the computer and more centralized storage of information, much finer-grained information is being exchanged. The picture of man gained from his physical record can be more complete than ever before, but we must distinguish between a *picture* of man and man, for we can only paint a highly distorted pictoral record. It is information that can be reduced to *nice clean numbers*: IQ scores, grades in school, height, weight, salary, standardized job-description numbers, list of ailments, list of infractions of the law, list of periods of unemployment, list of credit dealings, the inevitable accidental error or two in the file — and lastly, for flavor, possibly a malicious personal reference.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":178,"value":"---\n## 1970s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1407,"value":"**[A Computer Movie Simulating Urban Growth in the Detroit Region](https://www.jstor.org/stable/143141)** \n*Waldo R. Tobler \n1970*\n\n> Introduces Tobler’s First Law of Geography: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.” See also his [2004 paper](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.09402009.x) on the legacy of and reactions to the “law”. ","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1923,"value":"**Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects** \n_Roger Shepard, Jacqueline Metzler \n1971_\n\n>“The time required to recognize that two perspective drawings portray objects of the same three-dimensional shape is found to be (i) a linearly increasing function of the angular difference in the portrayed orientations of the two objects and (ii) no shorter for differences corresponding simply to a rigid rotation of one of the two-dimensional drawings in its own picture plane than for differences corresponding to a rotation of the three-dimensional object in depth.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2365,"value":"**An Iterative Procedure for the Polygonal Approximation of Plane Curves** \n_Urs Ramer \n1972_\n>Contributed to the [Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramer%E2%80%93Douglas%E2%80%93Peucker_algorithm) for line simplification. (If the history of visualization includes this, it must also include key breakthroughs in pens and brushes.)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2573,"value":"**Applications Of B-Spline Approximation To Geometric Problems Of Computer-Aided Design** \n_Richard F. Riesenfeld \n1973_\n\n>Introduces basis splines (possibly building on Bézier curves?).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":578,"value":"**[Graphs in Statistical Analysis](https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/gerstman/StatPrimer/anscombe1973.pdf)** \n*F. J. Anscombe \n1973*\n\n>Introduces [Anscombe’s quartet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet). “A computer should make both calculations _and_ graphs.” He concludes: “Unfortunately, most persons who have recourse to a computer for statistical analysis of data are not much\ninterested either in computer programming or in statistical method, being primarily concerned with their own proper business. Hence the common use of library programs and various statistical packages. Most of these originated in the pre-visual era. The user is not showered with graphical displays. He can get them only with trouble, cunning and a fighting spirit. It’s time that was changed.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2590,"value":"**Mathematical and practical possibilities of UNISURF** \n_Pierre Bézier \n1974_\n\n>Discusses Bézier’s work on CAD at Renault, where he had developed what would become known as “Bézier curves”, though de Casteljau had privately anticipated him by several years. (I don’t know what was the “original” Bézier curves paper, if any.)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2533,"value":"**An algorithm for high-speed curve generation** \n_George Merrill Chaikin \n1974_\n\n> Describes how to generate a curve by recursively cutting corners off a path through control points. “Chaikin’s curve has been shown to be equivalent to a quadratic B-spline curve (a piecewise quadratic Bézier curve). However, Chaikin’s method avoids the analytical definition of B-splines” ([ref.](https://www.cs.unc.edu/~dm/UNC/COMP258/LECTURES/Chaikins-Algorithm.pdf)). Cited in Catmull & Clark (1978), below. [Demo](https://observablehq.com/@pamacha/chaikins-algorithm).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1576,"value":"**[PRIM-9: An interactive multidimensional data display and analysis system](https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-6/690b293b4b227c744a52745894c5ec6a)** ([video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7XoW2qiFUA)) \n*Mary Anne Fisherkeller, Jerome H. Friedman, John W. Tukey \n1974*\n\n> “PRIM-9 is an interactive computer graphics program for Picturing, Rotation, Isolation, and Masking — in up to 9 dimensions. It is implemented on the Graphics Interpretation Facility of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University. This facility consists\nof an Information Display’s IDIIOM refresh CRT and a Varian 620/i minicomputer, linked to an IBM 360191.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2582,"value":"**A class of local interpolating splines** \n_Ed Catmull, Raphael Rom \n1974_\n\n>Twelve years before Catmull co-founded Pixar, he and Rom wrote about a subset of splines that are “local and interpolating”, which I think means they pass exactly through control points instead of approximating them; these became known as Catmull-Rom splines.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2576,"value":"**Computer-Aided Design Applications of the Rational B-Spline Approximation Form** \n_Kenneth James Versprille \n1975_\n\n>Building on Riesenfeld’s dissertation, generalizes basis splines to be _non-uniform_ and _rational_, i.e., non-uniform rational basis splines, soon embraced (and abbreviated to NURBS) by engineers at Boeing. Versprille had [run screaming](https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/solidedge/just-how-did-nurbs-come-to-be-by-dr-ken-versprille/) from _pure math_, instead seeking out concrete practical applications, and was delighted by CAD. “If you think you’ve seen long equations, try writing out a rational B-Spline. I tell a story that I had to sit in one of the university’s cafeterias in order to have a long enough table to write out the equations.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":977,"value":"**[Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data From Berkeley](http://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/1030/Bickel-Berkeley.pdf)** \n*P. J. Bickel, E. A. Hammel, J. W. O’Connell \n1975*\n\n> Describes a famous case of Simpson’s paradox: men applying to grad school at U.C. Berkeley were more likely than women to be admitted, but women were slightly more likely than men to be accepted by a given department. The authors conclude: “The bias in the aggregated data stems not from any pattern of discrimination on the part of admissions committees, which seem quite fair on the whole, but apparently from prior screening at earlier levels of the educational system. Women are shunted by their socialization and education toward fields of graduate study that are generally more crowded, less productive of completed degrees, and less well funded, and that frequently offer poorer professional employment prospects.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":514,"value":"**[Exploratory Data Analysis](http://www.ru.ac.bd/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2019/03/102_05_01_Tukey-Exploratory-Data-Analysis-1977.pdf)** \n*John W. Tukey \n1977*\n\n>“It is important to understand what you *can do* before you learn to measure how *well* you seem to have *done* it.” Contrasts confirmatory with exploratory approaches; so influential it might now seem obvious. “Pictures that emphasize what we already know — ‘security blankets’ to reassure us — are frequently not worth the space they take. Pictures that have to be gone over with a reading glass to see the main point are wasteful of time and inadequate of effect. The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” (See also his [Some Graphic and Semigraphic Displays](https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/tukey), 1972.)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2539,"value":"**[Recursively generated B-spline surfaces on arbitrary topological meshes](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/CS284/PAPERS/CatmullClark_SDSurf.pdf)** \n_Ed Catmull, Jim Clark \n1978_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":121,"value":"**[Evaluation of mouse, rate-controlled isometric joystick, step keys, and text keys for text selection on a CRT](http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/SSL-77-1_Evaluation_of_Mouse_Rate-Controlled_Isometric_Joystick_Step_Keys_and_Text_Keys_for_Text_Selection_on_a_CRT.pdf)** \n*Stuart K. Card, William K. English, Betty J. Burr \n1978* \n\n>[Fitts’s law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law) “predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target”; according to Wikipedia, this paper was its first application to HCI. The authors use it “to compare performance of different input devices, with the mouse coming out on top compared to the joystick or directional movement keys,” contributing to Xerox’s subsequent move to commercialize the mouse.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":479,"value":"**[SABL: A Resistant Seasonal Adjustment Procedure With Graphical Methods for Interpretation and Diagnosis](https://www.census.gov/ts/papers/Conference1978/ClevelandDunnTerpenning1978.pdf)** \n*William S. Cleveland, Douglas M. Dunn, Irma J. Terpenning \n1978* \n\n>Zan Armstrong (of [Everything* is Seasonal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiF4-g001EQ), 2016) cites this for pioneering the cycle plot, which, like analemmas in astronomy, show a periodic slice of time over time — a profound transformation of perhaps the most common independent axis. “From a class of transformations of the data, SABL selects the one that minimizes the lack of Stability of the seasonal component. It then decomposes the transformed time series into additive trend, seasonal, and irregular components using resistant-smoothing techniques.” See also [STL](https://www.wessa.net/download/stl.pdf) (1990).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":170,"value":"**Organization in Vision: Essays on Gestalt Perception** \n*Gaetano Kanizsa (Ed.) \n1979*\n\n> I haven’t even glanced at this and only found it because people keep talking about [Gestalt principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology) so I found [The Aesthetics of Graph Visualization](http://diglib.eg.org/bitstream/handle/10.2312/COMPAESTH.COMPAESTH07.057-064/057-064.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y), which cites Kanizsa: “Beginning in 1911, psychologists in the Gestalt school proposed generic principles that describe how humans group various stimuli based on points and lines. This work has been credited with identifying fundamental perceptual phenomena.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1557,"value":"**[Image of a spherical black hole with thin accretion disk](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979A%26A....75..228L)** \n*Jean-Pierre Luminet \n1979*","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":685,"value":"**[VisiCalc](http://www.bricklin.com/history/saiidea.htm)** \n*Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston \n1979*\n\n> The original electronic spreadsheet was launched in 1979; Dan Bricklin wrote, much later: “The idea for the electronic spreadsheet came to me while I was a student at the Harvard Business School, working on my MBA degree, in the spring of 1978. Sitting in Aldrich Hall, room 108, I would daydream. ‘Imagine if my calculator had a ball in its back, like a mouse...’ (I had seen a mouse previously, I think in a demonstration at a conference by Doug Engelbart, and maybe the Alto). And ‘...imagine if I had a heads-up display, like in a fighter plane, where I could see the virtual image hanging in the air in front of me. I could just move my mouse/keyboard calculator around on the table, punch in a few numbers, circle them to get a sum, do some calculations, and answer “10% will be fine!”’”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2446,"value":"**[On optimal and data-based histograms](https://academic.oup.com/biomet/article-abstract/66/3/605/232642?redirectedFrom=fulltext)** \n_David W. Scott \n1979_\n\n>When Excel (or Observable Plot) makes a histogram, it defaults to bins of width ${tex`{\\frac {3.49{\\hat {\\sigma }}}{\\sqrt[{3}]{n}}}`}, where ${tex`\\hat {\\sigma }`} is the sample standard deviation and ${tex`n`} is the number of samples, in order to “minimize the integrated mean squared error of the density estimate”, thanks to this paper.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":185,"value":"---\n## 1980s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2550,"value":"**The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces** \n_William H. Whyte \n1980_\n\n>Includes a mix of straightforward and inventive visualizations of the usage of said space. Glimpses of the researchers’ collection methods feel both “antiquated” (manual notes on paper plans of parks) and unsurpassed.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1416,"value":"$32","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2175,"value":"**Icicle Plots: Better Displays for Hierarchical Clustering** \n_J. B. Kruskal, J. M. Landwehr \n1981_\n\n>Introduces the [icicle plot](https://observablehq.com/@d3/icicle) for showing hierarchical clustering. It predates the treemap by ten years, and the sunburst plot (of which it is the Cartesian, instead of radial, form) by twenty.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":530,"value":"**[Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/778687/622e0ba69d28d9ff4049b1bc81462079.pdf)** \n*Ian Hacking \n1982*\n\n> “Overt statistical study of populations comes to amass gigantic quantities of data that are seldom effective in controlling or altering the populations of study in the ways intended. Although data collectors often tell why they collect this or that bit of information, why fear the census-taker, we might ask. The census will never be able to use what it finds out about you anyway. The fetishistic collection of overt statistical data about populations has as its motto ‘information and control,’ but it would more truly be ‘disinformation and mismanagement.’ Yet there is a quite unintended effect of enumerating, and I call this subversive. Enumeration demands kinds of things or people to count. Counting is hungry for categories. Many of the categories we now use to describe people are byproducts of the needs of enumeration.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1391,"value":"**[The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449298208914450)** \n*Ben Shneiderman \n1982*\n\n> See also his “[Direct Manipulation. A Step Beyond Programming Languages](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1654471)” (1983) and this [history of HyperTIES](http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hyperties/), which taught me not to take for granted that “text itself [can] be the link marker”. I haven’t read the papers yet and don’t know the source for [Wikipedia’s nice summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shneiderman#Direct_manipulation_interface) of direct manipulation: “(1) continuous representation of the objects and actions, (2) rapid, incremental, and reversible actions, and (3) physical actions and gestures to replace typed commands”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1986,"value":"**Orality and Literacy** \n_Walter Ong \n1982_\n\n>“Our complacency in thinking of words as signs is due to the tendency, perhaps incipient in oral cultures but clearly marked in chirographic cultures and far more marked in typographic and electronic cultures, to reduce all sensation and indeed all human experience to visual analogues.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":509,"value":"**[The Visual Display of Quantitative Information](https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi)** \n*Edward Tufte \n1983*\n\n>Perhaps the most famous book here; introduces the slope graph.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1104,"value":"**[Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and the Application to the Development of Graphical Methods](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2288400)** \n*William S. Cleveland, Robert McGill \n1984*\n\n> Described by Kennedy Elliott as “the archetypical seminal study for information visualization.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1026,"value":"**[The Plane with Parallel Coordinates](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01898350)** \n*Alfred Inselberg \n1985*\n\n>Introduces parallel coordinates, motivated by seeking better intuition for higher-dimensional geometry, in which a high-dimensional point is represented by a line drawn between axes representing each dimension, like a Cartesian version of the radar chart.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1443,"value":"**[Preattentive Processing in Vision](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0734189X85800049)** \n*Anne Treisman \n1985*\n\n> “Visual analysis appears to be functionally divided between an early preattentive level of processing at which simple features are coded spatially in parallel and a later stage at which focused attention is required to conjoin the separate features into coherent objects… Some further studies of search have revealed a striking asymmetry between several pairs of stimuli which differ in the presence or absence of a single part or property… It suggests that search for the presence of a visual primitive is automatic and parallel, whereas search for the absence of the same feature is serial and requires focused attention.” (Via [Heman Robinson](https://observablehq.com/@heman/preattentive-symbols-176), who proposed [a good symbol set](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10618600.2019.1637746) in 2017; [see also](https://infovis-wiki.net/wiki/Preattentive_processing).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":16,"value":"**[Automating the design of graphical presentations of relational information](https://research.tableau.com/sites/default/files/p110-mackinlay.pdf)** \n*Jock Mackinlay \n1986*\n\n> Presaged Tableau, to some extent, and in 2005 Mackinlay incorporated some of it into Tableau. “The goal of the research described in this paper is to develop an application-independent presentation tool that automatically designs effective graphical presentations (such as bar charts, scatter plots, and connected graphs) of relational information. […] The approach described in this paper is based on the view that graphical presentations are sentences of graphical languages.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":535,"value":"**[Making Up People](https://serendipstudio.org/oneworld/system/files/Hacking_making-up-people.pdf)** \n*Ian Hacking \n1986*\n\n> “Social change creates new categories of people, but the counting is no mere report of developments. It elaborately, often philanthropically, creates new ways for people to be.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":548,"value":"**[Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together](http://worrydream.com/refs/Latour%20-%20Visualisation%20and%20Cognition.pdf)** \n*Bruno Latour \n1986*\n\n>“Diagrams, lists, formulae, archives, engineering drawings, files, equations, dictionaries, collections and so on, depending on the way they are put into focus, may explain almost everything or almost nothing. It is all too easy to throw a set of clichés together extending Havelock’s argument about the Greek alphabet (1980), or Walter Ong’s rendering of the Ramist method (1971), all the way to computer culture, passing through the Chinese obsession with ideograms, double-entry book keeping, and without forgetting the Bible. Everyone agrees that print, images, and writing are everywhere present, but how much explanatory burden can they carry? How many cognitive abilities may be, not only facilitated, but thoroughly explained by them?”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2312,"value":"**[Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D computer animation](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462-f09/www/lec/Lesseter.pdf)** \n_John Lasseter \n1987_\n\n>Principles include: squash and stretch, timing, anticipation, staging, follow through and overlapping action, straight ahead action and pose-to-pose action, slow in and out, arcs, exaggeration, secondary action, and appeal.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":191,"value":"---\n## 1990s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1202,"value":"**Mathematical Impressions** \n*Anatoly Fomenko \n1990 *\n\n> His “practical” textbook illustrations [look like this](https://twitter.com/SaulSchleimer/status/1252871850796871680); here, the man who believes the Trojan War and the Crusades were the same historical event collects his artwork dating back to the ’60s, depicting homotopic topology in a fantastical manner more reminiscent of Doré and Blake’s takes on Milton and Dante.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":682,"value":"**[Lotus Improv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbsfvdZXE7s)** \n*Pito Salas et al. \n1990*\n\n> If you look at the 1979 version of VisiCalc and the latest version of Excel, you will see that the paradigm of the electronic spreadsheet has not changed much. Lotus Improv tried to adapt it to multidimensional data, pioneering the “pivot table”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1749,"value":"$33","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1294,"value":"**[Tree visualization with Tree-maps: A 2-d space-filling approach](http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/trs/91-03/91-03.html)** \n*Ben Shneiderman \n1991*\n\n> Introduces [treemaps](https://observablehq.com/@d3/treemap). “The traditional approach to representing tree structures is as a rooted, directed graph with the root node at the top of the page and children nodes below the parent node with lines connecting them… By contrast, this paper deals with a two-dimensional space-filling approach in which each node is a rectangle whose area is proportional to some attribute such as node size.” Shneiderman has more on the [history of treemaps](http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/). ([See also](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2533471_A_Brief_History_of_the_Mosaic_Display).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2515,"value":"**[Spectrally optimal sampling for distribution ray tracing](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=122718.122736)** \n_Don Mitchell \n1991_\n\n>Origin of Mitchell’s best-candidate algorithm. If you could see _n_ points of an image, how would you best distribute those points to learn as much as you can about the image? Mitchell’s answer is a pleasant “blue noise”, somewhat but not totally random, which apparently mimics the distribution of rods and cones in our eyes. See also [example](https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/best-candidate-circles), [explanation](https://blog.demofox.org/2017/10/20/generating-blue-noise-sample-points-with-mitchells-best-candidate-algorithm/).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":967,"value":"**[Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3632853.html)** \n*John P. Snyder \n1993*\n\n> Philippe Rivière noticed I was missing any kind of cartographic material; he said “I mostly just use” Snyder. I feel like completions of the phrase “I mostly just use…” are exactly what I’m looking for!","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1736,"value":"**[Pad++: Advances in multiscale interfaces](http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/images/pubs_pdfs/p315-bederson.pdf)** \n*Benjamin B. Bederson, Larry Stead, James D. Hollan \n1993*\n\n>A zoomable user interface, citing Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad (1963) and Ken Perlin’s Pad (1993), cited by van Wijk and Nuij (2003). “One premise of our work is the belief that navigation in information spaces is best supported by tapping into our natural spatial and geographic ways of thinking.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":543,"value":"**[Cognition in the Wild](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild)** \n*Edwin Hutchins \n1995*\n\n>An anthropologist and sailor, Hutchins studies the social organization on the bridge of a large naval ship like a kind of computer, arguing that “cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them.” [Latour’s review](http://worrydream.com/refs/Latour%20-%20review%20of%20Cognition%20in%20the%20Wild.pdf) describes a theme of the book: “cognition has nothing to do with minds nor with individuals but with the propagation of representations through various media, which are coordinated by a very lightly equipped human subject working in a group, inside a culture, with many artefacts and who might have internalized some parts of the process.”\n","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2558,"value":"**[A Subexponential Bound for Linear Programming](https://people.inf.ethz.ch/emo/PublFiles/SubexLinProg_ALG16_96.pdf)** \n_Jiří Matoušek, Micha Sharir, Emo Welzl \n1996_\n\n>Introduces an algorithm used for finding the smallest enclosing circle, a solution to Apollonius’s problem, used by [d3.packEnclose](https://d3js.org/d3-hierarchy/pack#packEnclose).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1744,"value":"**[The eyes have it: A task by data type taxonomy of information visualizations](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/papers/Shneiderman1996eyes.pdf)** \n*Ben Shneiderman \n1996*\n\n>“A useful starting point for designing advanced graphical user interfaces is the Visual Information-Seeking Mantra: overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand. But this is only a starting point…”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":133,"value":"$34","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1837,"value":"**[Drawing graphs with dot](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=41A040EC88DF09A3116F507D75AAAB36?doi=10.1.1.37.1582&rep=rep1&type=pdf)** \n_Eleftherios Koutsofios, Stephen C. North \n1996_\n\n> “_dot_ draws directed graphs as hierarchies. Like its predecessor, _dag_, it is a Unix filter, makes good drawings, and runs quickly. Its important new features are node ports for drawing data structures with pointers; improved placement of nodes, edge splines and labels; cluster layouts; and an underlying file language for graph tools.” Later bundled with [Graphviz (2001)](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-45848-4_57) and, more recently, Observable: ${htl.html`

${dot`digraph g {\n node [fontsize=\"20\"];\n\trankdir = LR;\n\ta -> b;\n}`}

`}.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":724,"value":"**[The Grammar of Graphics](https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387245447)** \n*Leland Wilkinson \n1999*\n\n> Builds on Bertin and leads to ggplot2 (2011), which references its title and embodies its theory of the building blocks of charts. Other charting libraries have since been inspired to use a similar API, including Vega-Lite (2017) and Observable’s own Plot (2021).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":975,"value":"**[All maps of parameter estimates are misleading](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allmaps.pdf)** \n*Andrew Gelman, Phillip N. Price \n1999*\n\n>“It is well known that plotting observed rates can have serious drawbacks when sample sizes vary by area, since very high (and low) observed rates are found disproportionately in poorly-sampled areas. Unfortunately, adjusting the observed rates to account for the effects of small-sample noise can introduce an opposite effect, in which the highest adjusted rates tend to be found disproportionately in well-sampled areas. In either case, the maps can be difficult to interpret because the display of spatial variation in the underlying parameters of interest is confounded with spatial variation in sample sizes. As a result, spatial patterns occur in adjusted rates even if there is no spatial structure in the underlying parameters of interest, and adjusted rates tend to look too uniform in areas with little data.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2341,"value":"**[Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think](https://hci.ucsd.edu/220/CMSChap1_Using_Vision_to_Think.pdf)** \n_Jock D. Mackinlay, Stuart Card, Ben Shneiderman \n1999_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":193,"value":"---\n## 2000s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2140,"value":"**[An evaluation of space-filling information visualizations for depicting hierarchical structures](https://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/sunburst/)** \n_John Stasko, Richard Catrambone, Mark Guzdial, Kevin McDonald \n2000_\n\n>Introduces the sunburst chart and compares it to the treemap.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":675,"value":"**[Polaris: A System for Query, Analysis and Visualization of Multi-dimensional Relational Databases](https://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/polaris/)** ([extended](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/polaris_extended), [hierarchical](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/polaris_olap), [multiscale](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/pan_zoom/)) \n*Chris Stolte, Diane Tang, Pat Hanrahan \n2000*\n\n>Somehow, in twenty years, this paper on “constructing visual specifications of table-based graphical displays” begat this [arena rock business conference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWECV_a_aaA). [Polaris](https://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/polaris/) became Tableau, so it’s nice to see the core ideas that got it there: relational databases, data cubes, multiscale visualization, pivot tables, a GUI for grammar.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":113,"value":"**[Rendering Effective Route Maps: Improving Usability Through Generalization](https://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/routemaps/)** \n*Maneesh Agrawala, Chris Stolte \n2001*\n\n> “Route maps, which depict a path from one location to another, have emerged as one of the most popular applications on the Web. Current computer-generated route maps, however, are often very difficult to use.” Inspired by handdrawn maps, the system “generalizes” route maps to cull irrelevant roads, preserving only the landmarks that a local might cite in colloquial directions.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1913,"value":"**[Semantic Depth of Field](https://kosara.net/papers/2001/Kosara-InfoVis-2001.pdf)** \n_Robert Kosara, Silvia Miksch, Helwig Hauser \n2001_\n\n>“We utilize a well-known method from photography and cinematography (depth-of-field effect) for information visualization, which is to blur different parts of the depicted scene in dependence of their relevance. Independent of their spatial locations, objects of interest are depicted sharply in SDOF, whereas the context of the visualization is blurred.” Robert said (2022) that, looking back, he’s realized that people need _texture_ to interpret a focused or out-of-focus object.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2058,"value":"**[Blue Marble 2002](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/786/blue-marble-2002/)** \n_Robert Simmon, Reto Stöckli \n2002_\n\n>The name “Blue Marble” originally referred to a photograph taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, one of the first photographs ever taken of the whole Earth. But the version produced in 2002 is not strictly a photograph; it’s somewhere between that and a map: a composite of four months of light data, with some tweaks done in Photoshop. It is also the original iPhone’s lock screen wallpaper. ([More info](https://qz.com/192700/the-guy-who-created-iphones-earth-image-explains-why-he-needed-to-fake-it/).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1723,"value":"**[Smooth and efficient zooming and panning](https://www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/zoompan.pdf)** \n*Jarke J. van Wijk, Wim A.A. Nuij \n2003*\n\n>Used by [d3.interpolateZoom](https://github.com/d3/d3-interpolate#interpolateZoom), which makes it easy to take for granted. They frame the problem starting from the principle of *focus + context*; you can achieve it statically in space, but they achieve it “in the time dimension.” They write: “At first sight, [linear] interpolation might seem to be sufficient to make the transition from one view to another. However, this solution falls short when the transition has to be made from one close-up to another,” like NY to LA. “Such a simple solution leads to a long animation, where a small strip of the US is shown in detail. A somewhat better solution is to zoom out first, pan across the continent, followed by a zoom in on the city of destination.” In conclusion: “The problem turned out to be more complex than it seems at first sight… Was this worth it? We think it was.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2482,"value":"**[A Comparison of the Readability of Graphs Using Node-Link and Matrix-Based Representations](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1382886)** \n_Mohammad Ghoniem, Jean-Daniel Fekete, Philippe Castagliola \n2004_\n\n>Won an IEEE VIS “[Test of Time](https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/program/awards/awards)” award in 2024, I think maybe partly for helping promote the idea that readability can be empirically quantified and evaluated at all.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2347,"value":"**[The bubble cursor: enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor's activation area](https://www.tovigrossman.com/BubbleCursor/)** \n_Tovi Grossman, Ravin Balakrishnan \n2005_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2554,"value":"**[Visualization of large hierarchical data by circle packing](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1124772.1124851)** \n_Weixin Wang, Hui Wang, Guozhong Dai, Hongan Wang \n2006_\n\n>Introduces a new circle-packing algorithm, used by [d3.packSiblings](https://d3js.org/d3-hierarchy/pack#packSiblings).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":539,"value":"**[Magic Ink](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/)** \n*Bret Victor \n2006*\n\n> Computer-native media, be they essays or graphics, are often distinguished from printed media by calling them “interactive”, as if the essential distinguishing characteristic of a chart on the Web is that you have to click around to see all of it. By distinguishing manipulation software (like Photoshop) from information software (like movie listings), Victor notes that interactivity may be harmful in the latter, except to navigate a space. Instead of fixating on how to make something interactive, think about how to make it context-sensitive.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":95,"value":"**[Animated Transitions in Statistical Data Graphics](http://vis.berkeley.edu/papers/animated_transitions/)** \n*Jeffrey Heer, George Robertson \n2007*\n\n> Investigates the effectiveness of animated transitions in graphics, of the sort that D3 embraced. Suggests maintaining [object constancy](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/), and that “intermediate interpolation states [should] remain valid data graphics”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":10,"value":"**[Voyagers and Voyeurs: Supporting Asynchronous Collaborative Information Visualization](http://vis.stanford.edu/papers/senseus)** \n*Jeffrey Heer, Fernanda Viégas, Martin Wattenberg \n2007*\n\n> “This paper describes mechanisms for asynchronous collaboration in the context of information visualization, recasting visualizations as not just analytic tools, but social spaces.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2200,"value":"**[The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008](http://www.nytimes.com/\ninteractive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html)** \n_Mathew Bloch, Lee Byron, Shan Carter, Amanda Cox \n2008_\n\n>Introduces the streamgraph, a sort of smoothed stacked area chart, which Byron had developed for a previous student project called “Listening History”, as [described here](http://leebyron.com/streamgraph/stackedgraphs_byron_wattenberg.pdf). (Here’s a sort of [streamgraph from the 1950s](https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/rural-electrification), via [Omar](https://twitter.com/rsnous/status/1098478804794667009).)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":19,"value":"**[Graphical Histories for Visualization: Supporting Analysis, Communication, and Evaluation](https://research.tableau.com/sites/default/files/2008-GraphicalHistories-InfoVis.pdf)** \n*Jeffrey Heer, Jock D. Mackinlay, Chris Stolte, Maneesh Agrawala \n2008*\n\n> “Interactive history tools, ranging from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions, facilitate iterative forms of interaction. In this paper, we investigate the design of history mechanisms for information visualization.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2277,"value":"**[Rolling the Dice: Multidimensional Visual Exploration using Scatterplot Matrix Navigation](https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00699065/document)** \n_Niklas Elmqvist, Pierre Dragicevic, Jean-Daniel Fekete \n2008_\n\n>A successor of sorts to Tukey’s PRIM-9; also cites Cleveland’s _Dynamic Graphics for Statistics_ (1988) for its work on scatterplot matrices.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":90,"value":"**[A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/imager/tr/2009/NestedModel/NestedModel.pdf)** \n*Tamara Munzner \n2009*\n\n> “We present a nested model for the visualization design and validation with four layers: characterize the task and data in the vocabulary of the problem domain, abstract into operations and data types, design visual encoding and interaction techniques, and create algorithms to execute techniques efficiently.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":195,"value":"---\n## 2010s","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1018,"value":"**[Disaggregated spatial modelling for areal unit categorical data](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999915/)** \n*E. C. Tassone, M. L. Miranda, A. E. Gelfand \n2010*\n\n> Via Zan, an example of a *geographic* Simpson’s paradox!","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2213,"value":"**[Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/26/sports/olympics/20100226-olysymphony.html)** \n_Amanda Cox \n2010_\n\n>Here visualization is combined with “auralization” or “sonification”; the temporal mapping is 1:1 (a map as big as the territory), but abstracted and collated.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":6,"value":"**[D3: Data-Driven Documents](http://vis.stanford.edu/papers/d3)** \n*Michael Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky, Jeffrey Heer \n2011*\n\n>The next year, it [got into the New York Times](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget-proposal-graphic.html); I wrote about its history [here](https://observablehq.com/@tophtucker/how-d3-moved-us). I grew up in the post-D3 milieu, so the original paper captures distinctions from the *status quo ante* that I had not appreciated, like an emphasis on _transformation, not representation_.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":137,"value":"**[Wrangler: Interactive Visual Specification of Data Transformation Scripts](http://vis.stanford.edu/papers/wrangler)** \n*Sean Kandel, Andreas Paepcke, Joseph Hellerstein, Jeffrey Heer \n2011*\n\n>Led to the company Trifacta. “Wrangler combines direct manipulation of visualized data with automatic inference of relevant transforms, enabling analysts to iteratively explore the space of applicable operations and preview their effects.… Interactive histories support review, refinement, and annotation of transformation scripts.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":731,"value":"**[ggplot2](https://vita.had.co.nz/papers/ggplot2-wires.pdf)** \n*Hadley Wickham \n2011*\n\n>Building on Bertin and Wilkinson, introduces the popular and influential graphics package for R.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2345,"value":"**[Interactive Exploration of Temporal Event Sequences](https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/12749/Wongsuphasawat_umd_0117E_13156.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)** \n_Krist Wongsuphasawat \n2012_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":613,"value":"**[The rainbow is dead… long live the rainbow!](https://mycarta.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-rainbow-is-dead-long-live-the-rainbow-series-outline/)** \n*Matteo Niccoli \n2012*\n\n>The traditional rainbow varies dramatically in intensity: the yellow is so light, the red so harsh, the blue so expansive, the pink so cramped! Niccoli, inspired by geoscience cartography, explores a more perceptually uniform rainbow. See also his short [How to assess a colourmap](https://www.agilelibre.com/content/how-to-assess-a-colourmap). Via [A Less-Angry Rainbow](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/310c99e53880faec2434).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":38,"value":"**[Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics](https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/)** \n*C. G. Healey, J. T. Enns \n2012*\n\n> Building on Treisman and others, describes how “preattentive processing” leads some visual distinctions to jump out at the viewer far faster than others.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1121,"value":"**[Drawing Dynamic Visualizations](https://vimeo.com/66085662)** ([addendum](http://worrydream.com/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalkAddendum/)) \n*Bret Victor \n2013*\n\n>OK at first I just had Magic Ink ’cuz it’s long and early, and then this one has “visualization” in the title, but I’m not gonna just include every link on worrydream.com, you can click them yourself.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2372,"value":"**[M4: A Visualization-Oriented Time Series Data Aggregation](http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol7/p797-jugel.pdf)** \n_Uwe Jugel, Zbigniew Jerzak, Gregor Hackenbroich, Volker Markl \n2014_\n\n>See this [nice explanation by Jeffrey Heer](https://observablehq.com/@uwdata/m4-scalable-time-series-visualization).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":52,"value":"**[Visualization Analysis and Design](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~tmm/vadbook/)** \n*Tamara Munzner \n2014*\n\n> I haven’t read it, but if you had to assign one textbook, I [hear](https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/1202115922250457088) this would be a good choice.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":727,"value":"**[Tidy Data](https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v059i10)** \n*Hadley Wickham \n2014*\n\n>I started hearing “tidy data” before I knew it was a term of art. I remember thinking, “How can you really objectively say some data is tidy and some isn’t?” — but I didn’t know what people were talking about, and the convention of “variables in columns and observations in rows” has proven powerfully harmonizing and liberating.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1767,"value":"**[Visualizing Statistical Mix Effects and Simpson’s Paradox](https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/42901.pdf)** \n*Zan Armstrong, Martin Wattenberg \n2014*\n\n>Introduces the comet chart. “A central intuition behind treemaps is that the values of individual elements ‘roll up’ to show the values of overall areas. That is, by looking at the colors of a set of individual rectangles, a user can get a sense of the overall trend of the population. Unfortunately, it’s possible for this intuition to be strikingly wrong.”","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1012,"value":"$35","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1070,"value":"**[Voyager: Exploratory Analysis via Faceted Browsing of Visualization Recommendations](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/voyager/)** \n*Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Dominik Moritz, Anushka Anand, Jock Mackinlay, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer \n2016*\n\n>The familiar Excel chartmaking paradigm is like: you click a lot of buttons and then get the specified chart at the “end”. Abstractly, the controls for making the chart are already effectively navigating the space of all possible charts. But the space is hidden. Since making charts is (often) not terribly computationally intensive, Voyager shows you a ton of charts upfront, so you can navigate in a space where you see more of the points. [Demo](https://idl.uw.edu/voyager/).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1080,"value":"**[Why We Are Doing Fewer Interactives](https://github.com/archietse/malofiej-2016/blob/master/tse-malofiej-2016-slides.pdf)** \n*Archie Tse \n2016*\n\n>Tse, then Deputy Graphics Director for the New York Times, describes why their team moved away (somewehat) from steppers, tabs, and sliders: “Readers just want to scroll.” If something’s behind a click, most people won’t see it, so the bar to merit interactivity is high. See also Gregor Aisch’s [In Defense of Interactive Graphics](https://www.vis4.net/blog/2017/03/in-defense-of-interactive-graphics/).","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":158,"value":"**[Everything we know about how humans interpret graphics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0J6EDvlN30)** ([speaker notes](https://medium.com/@kennelliott/39-studies-about-human-perception-in-30-minutes-4728f9e31a73#.yblt9atje)) \n*Kennedy Elliot \n2016* \n\n>Speedrun through “39 studies on human perception in 30 minutes”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2352,"value":"**[The Connected Scatterplot for Presenting Paired Time Series](https://kosara.net/papers/2016/Haroz-TVCG-2016.pdf)** \n_Steve Haroz, Robert Kosara, Steven L. Franconeri \n2016_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2097,"value":"**[Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger](https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102)**
\n_B. P. Abbott et al.
\n2016_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2640,"value":"**[Acquired Codes of Meaning in Data Visualization and Infographics: Beyond Perceptual Primitives](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26529716/)**
\n_Lydia Byrne, Daniel Angus, Janet Wiles
2016_\n>“The term ‘graphics’ is explicitly defined by Bertin to exclude elements which ‘rely either on an explanation coded in another system (legends) or on a FIGURATIVE ANALOGY of shape or color (symbols), which is based on acquired habits or learned conventions and can never claim to be universal’”, the authors write; they consider the merits of those figurative elements often dismissed as “chart junk”.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2488,"value":"**[How Progressive Visualizations Affect Exploratory Analysis](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7563865)** \n_E. Zgraggen, A. Galakatos, A. Crotty, J. D. Fekete and T. Kraska \n2017_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":958,"value":"**[Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2017-VegaLite-InfoVis.pdf)** \n*Arvind Satyanarayan, Dominik Moritz, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Jeffrey Heer \n2017*\n\n>Building on Satyanarayan’s previous work on Vega ([2014](http://vis.csail.mit.edu/pubs/reactive-vega-model), [2016](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/reactive-vega-architecture/)), a lower-level visualization grammar and reactive architecture; bringing the grammar of graphics to JavaScript, including interactivity.","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2503,"value":"**[Value-Suppressing Uncertainty Palettes](https://www.domoritz.de/papers/2018-VSUPs-CHI.pdf)** \n_Michael Correll, Dominik Moritz, Jeffrey Heer \n2018_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2505,"value":"**[Draco](https://idl.uw.edu/papers/draco)** \n_Dominik Moritz, Chenglong Wang, Gregory Nelson, Halden Lin, Adam M. Smith, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer \n2019_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2507,"value":"**[Sketch-n-Sketch](https://ravichugh.github.io/sketch-n-sketch/)** \n_Brian Hempel, Justin Lubin, Ravi Chugh \n2019_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":2501,"value":"**[Conceptual metaphor and graphical convention influence the interpretation of line graphs](https://osf.io/5acjs/)** \n_Greg Woodin, Bodo Winter, Lace Padilla \n2019_","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":155,"value":"$36","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":954,"value":"For more papers, see the [MIT Visualization Group](http://vis.csail.mit.edu/), [UW Interactive Data Lab](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/), [University of Utah Visualization Design Lab](https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/) or the defunct [Stanford Vis Group](http://vis.stanford.edu/). Anyone know any good curricula online?","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":825,"value":"$37","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1797,"value":"---","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":1899,"value":"viewof calc = Inputs.button(\"Extract items as JSON\")","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":1785,"value":"items = {\n // contents may not exist yet when this cell runs :/\n // may wanna rewrite all cells with explicit structure\n calc;\n\n return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(\"strong\")).map((d) => {\n console.log(d)\n const title = d.innerText;\n console.log(title)\n const url = d.querySelector(\"a\")?.getAttribute(\"href\");\n console.log(d.parentElement)\n const [a, b] = d.parentElement.querySelector(\"em\").innerText.split(\"\\n\");\n const desc = d.parentElement.parentElement.querySelector(\"blockquote\")?.innerText\n let date, source;\n if (!b) {\n date = a;\n } else {\n source = a;\n date = b;\n }\n return { title, date, source, url, desc };\n });\n}","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"}],"files":"$W38","stdlib":"1","titling":"auto"}