Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure
.
.
Time distribution of events considered milestones in the history of data visualization, shown
by a rug plot and density estimate
the Milestones Project, http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone/, where
a colour version of this chapter will also be found.
Pre-17th Century: Early Maps and Diagrams
1.2.1
he earliest seeds of visualization arose in geometric diagrams, in tables of the posi-
tionsofstarsandothercelestialbodies,andinthemakingofmapstoaidinnavigation
and exploration. he idea of coordinates was used by ancient Egyptian surveyors in
laying out towns, earthly and heavenly positions were located by something akin to
latitude andlongitude byat least
B.C.,andthe mapprojection ofaspherical earth
into latitude and longitude by Claudius Ptolemy [c.
-c.
] in Alexandria would
serve as reference standards until the
th century.
Among the earliest graphical depictions of quantitative information is an anony-
mous
th-century multiple time-series graph of the changing position of the seven
most prominent heavenly bodies over space and time (Fig.
.
), described by Funk-
houser (
) and reproduced in Tute (
, p.
). he vertical axis represents the
inclination of the planetary orbits; the horizontal axis shows time, divided into
intervals. he sinusoidal variation with different periods is notable, as is the use of
agrid,suggesting both an implicit notion of acoordinate systemand something akin
to graph paper, ideas that would not be fully developed until the
-
s.
Inthe
thcentury,theideaofplottingatheoreticalfunction(asaprotobargraph)
and the logical relation between tabulating values and plotting them appeared in
