Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
(Smith, ).heseandotherthematic mapssoonledtonewwaysofshowingquan-
titative information on maps and, equally importantly, to new domains for graphi-
cally based inquiry.
In the s, Baron Charles Dupin [ - ] invented the use of continuous
shadings (from white to black) to show the distribution and degree of illiteracy in
France (Dupin, ) - the first unclassed choropleth map, and perhaps the first
modern-style thematic statistical map (Palsky, , p. ). Later given the lovely
title 'Carte de la France obscure et de la France éclairée,' it attracted wide attention,
and was also perhaps the first application of graphics in the social realm.
More significantly, in , the ministry of justice in France instituted the first
centralized national system of crime reporting, collected quarterly from all depart-
mentsandrecording thedetails ofeverychargelaid beforetheFrenchcourts. In ,
André-Michel Guerry, a lawyer with a penchant for numbers, used these data (along
with other data on literacy, suicides, donations to the poor and other 'moral' vari-
ables) to produce a seminal work on the moral statistics of France (Guerry, ) -
a work that (along with Quételet, , ) can be regarded as the foundation of
modern social science.
Guerry used maps in a style similar to Dupin to compare the ranking of depart-
ments on pairs of variables, notably crime vs. literacy, but other pairwise variable
comparisons were made. He used these to argue that the lack of an apparent (nega-
tive) relation between crime and literacy contradicted the armchair theories of some
social reformers who had argued that the way to reduce crime was to increase edu-
cation. Guerry's maps and charts made somewhat of an academic sensation both
in France and the rest of Europe; he later exhibited several of these at the Lon-
don Exhibition and carried out a comparative study of crime in England and France
(Guerry, ) for which he was awarded the Moynton Prize in statistics by the
French Academy of Sciences. But Guerry's systematic and careful work was unable
Image: http://math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/dupin -map_ .jpg
Guerryshowedthatratesofcrime,whenbrokendownbydepartment,typeofcrime,ageand
genderoftheaccusedandothervariables,remainedremarkablyconsistentfromyeartoyear,
yet variedwidely acrossdepartments. He usedthis toargue thatsuchregularity implied the
possibility ofestablishing social laws, muchasthe regularity of naturalphenomena implied
physical ones. Guerry also pioneered the study of suicide, with tabulations of suicides in
Paris, - , by sex, age, education, profession, etc., and a content analysis of suicide
notes as to presumed motives.
Today,one would use a scatterplot,but thatgraphic form hadonly just beeninvented(Her-
schel, )andwouldnotentercommonusageforanother years;seeFriendlyandDenis
( ).
Guerry seemed reluctant to take sides. He also contradicted the social conservatives who
argued for the need to build more prisons or impose more severe criminal sentences. See
Whitt ( ).
Among the plates in this last work, seven pairs of maps for England and France each
included sets of small line graphs to show trends over time, decompositions by subtype
of crime and sex, distributions over months of the year, and so forth. he final plate, on
general causes of crime, is an incredibly detailed and complex multivariate semi-graphic
displayattemptingtorelatevarioustypesofcrimestoeachother,tovarioussocialandmoral
aspects (instruction, religion, population) as well as to their geographic distribution.
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