Poster produced by: Martyna Karpinska, Helen Lally, Alice Rathbone, Dhruvin Shah, Jonathan Windridge What is circular

data?
Circular data is a collection of data that can be easily conveyed and presented to a user through the use of circles - pie charts are one modern example of circular data.

Charles Minard
Charles Joseph Minard, who Funkhouser called The Playfair of France (1) was the first person, who used a divided circle in cartography to show both amounts and relative proportions on a map (2). His maps and charts used and extended a number of circular graphic forms, which included pie charts and the Coxcomb. His goal was to make the proportions of numerical relations apparent to the eye immediately (1) and to represent an extra dimension to data (4). He created a map, called Carte figurative et approximative des quantits de viandes de boucherie envoyes sur pied par les dpartements et consommateurs Paris, which represents the quantities of butchers meats imported to the Paris market from each department situated all around France. The total quantity of all meat from each department is shown by a circle whose area is directly proportional to this total by weight. Each circle is subdivided to show the relative proportion of beef, veal and mutton.

William Playfair
William Playfair was a Scottish mathematician who was crucial in popularising the use of graphical displays. His reasoning behind his wanting to create new ways of representing data came from his view that no study is less alluring or more dry and tedious than statistic (Playfair, 1801). Playfair wanted to make statistics more accessible. (1) He is known for being the creator of the bar charts and line graphs, with his last big creation being the pie chart which he debuted along with his invention of circle graphs in his 1801 work entitled Statistical Breviary; Shewing, on a Principle Entirely New, the Resources of Every State and Kingdom in Europe. (2) In just one figure (pictured below), Playfair introduced three new ways of graphical representation. The circle graph represents European countries in 1801, with the area of the circles being proportional to the land size. Within the circles on the graph we can see pie charts, such as for the Turkish Empire, with each segment of the pie chart proportional to the amount of land area belonging to the different continents. Finally we move onto the Venn diagram pictured. Although officially Venn diagrams were not created in 1880, we can see them pictured in Playfairs work. The ownership of the German Empire, like Turkey, was split, but also contained land areas of joint possession, therefore Playfair used a Venn diagram to show the proportion of the land jointly owned. (3)

After Nightingale
Spie charts were developed in 2003 by Feitelson, and are used to compare two partitions of a pie chart by superimposing one onto another. The partition is shown by using a base pie chart and then changing the radius to show its relative size, so they extend over the original radius. This way its easier to see if the relative size has shrunk or grown. Is used to work out the new radius, where the base partition is and the second partition is . We want the angles in degrees for the base partition, so each angle is calculated by The radius is constant for the base pie chart so call it 1. Then for the super-imposed, the radius must reflect its size:

Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (1820 1910) was a well-known British social reformer who pursued a profession in nursing and became prominent during her services in the Crimean war. However, few are made aware of her influence and contribution towards statistical analysis [1]. Nightingale wanted to graphically demonstrate medical information that was related to the causes of soldiers deaths, namely the proportion of deaths caused by wounds against those from insanitary hospital conditions [2]. Nightingale developed a circular diagram, known as the Polar area graph, which categorised an annual dataset of the causes of death into months; where the data was divided into twelve equal angles representing the twelve months of the year. These graphs would later be labelled coxcomb charts, and they showed the causes of death proportionally. The central wedge would typically represent death from wounds, the middle wedge would show the proportion that died from other causes and the outer wedge would represent death by disease caused by poor sanitation. It was this statistical analysis which had a major impact on the improvement of these conditions as she found that a significant proportion of deaths was due to diseases caused by poor hygiene.

There are many more variations of the polar area diagrams today, such as, radial charts, exploded pie charts, 3D pie charts and doughnut charts.

References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Fienberg, S. Graphical Methods in Statistics. The American Statistician. 1979, 33(4), pp. 165-178. Beniger, J and Robyn, D. Quantitative Graphics in Statistics: A Brief History. The American Statistician. 1978, 32(1), pp. 1-11. Spence, I. No Humble Pie: The Origins and Usage of a Statistical Chart. Journal of Educational and Behavioural Statistics. 2005 30(4), pp. 353-368. Friendly, M. Visions and Re-Visions of Charles Joseph Minard. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. 2002, 27(1), pp. 31-51. Friendly, M. Revisions of Minard*. Journal of Educational and Behavioural Statistics. [Online]. 1999 Forthcoming. [Accessed 23 March 2014]. Available from: http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/minard/minard.pdf Wikipedia. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. 1996. [Accessed 23 March 2014]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minardcarte-viande-1858.png

References (cont.)
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. JPowered. History of Pie Charts. [Online]. [Unknown Year]. [Accessed 23 March 2014]. Available from: http://www.jpowered.com/graphs -andcharts/pie-chart-history.htm Haighton, J. et al. Statistics. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes, 2003. Boslaugh, S. Statistics in a Nutshell. California: O'Reilly Media, 2012. Goldie, S. Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea. Manchester: Mandolin, 1997. p94 http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/nitegale.htm http://www.jpowered.com/graphs-and-charts/pie-chart-history.htm http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~feit/papers/Spie03TR.pdf http://plus.maths.org/content/florence -nightingale-compassionate-statistician