Florence Nightingale, Statistical Graphics Pioneer

Science News has a fascinating look at an under-appreciated corner of the career of Florence Nightingale — as an innovator in the use of statistical graphics to argue for social change. Nightingale returned from the Crimean War a heroine in the eyes of the British citizenry, for the soldiers' lives she had saved. But she came to appreciate that the way to save far more lives was to reform attitudes in the military about sanitation. Under the tutelage of William Farr, who had just invented the field of medical statistics, she compiled overwhelming evidence (in the form of an 830-page report) of the need for change. "As impressive as her statistics were, Nightingale worried that Queen Victoria's eyes would glaze over as she scanned the tables. So Nightingale devised clever ways of presenting the information in charts. Statistics had been presented using graphics only a few times previously, and perhaps never to persuade people of the need for social change."

Comments

Re:Prior art on Microsoft.

[girlintraining]

No woman in her right mind would claim to have created Powerpoint. Every other woman who's had to sit through a presentation by some suit thinking he's all that and a bag of chips because he made pretty shiny on a screen would want her revenge. And trust me, us girls have ways of dealing with our own that would leave you wishing there was more than just your hands to cover your balls with after I told you even a tenth of what all that entails.

Re:Mod me down, but you know I'm right

[girlintraining]

The arguments of VHS v. Beta are not applicable today even if the debate of blue ray and HDDVD were similar and drew a lot of lessons from it.

I think I see your problem; History has no value to you. Nothing old does.

The social mores that exist have more to do with Sexual Dimorphism and gender differences that even baboons exhibit.

I suppose we should all just give up then and fling poo at each other, because we are only our genes, nothing more. You then go on to implictly state that only dumb girls and dumb men subscribe to this (never mind your choice of pronouns, which is comparing a child to an adult). You're just full of contradictions and you can't even see them; Which is essentially what prejudice is.

Forget you, you're what I call an educated moron -- someone who's come up with extremely rationalized prejudices that sound great on the surface. I've met people like you -- the fact that you're smart and educated doesn't prevent you from making stupid mistakes like this one. Apparently repeatedly. There's good news for you though -- you've got a lot of company.