tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15935045.post665156763464567169..comments2024-01-19T02:23:51.665-06:00Comments on Journal Wunelle: The Power of Prayerwstachourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12447198404608861357noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15935045.post-51030271787193958142009-07-27T06:03:28.093-05:002009-07-27T06:03:28.093-05:00Yes, in the crush I rather forgot to mention the i...Yes, in the crush I rather forgot to mention the importance of his map, though author Johnson does not neglect it. It was one of the key elements he used to convince the miasmists that deaths were centered around the pump.<br /><br />As an aside, I bought a book a couple weeks back that made me think of Dzesika: it's called Urban Railway Maps of the World (or some such; I'm in Germany and don't have it in front of me just now). I initially though the book was a description of various cities' subways and passenger rail systems, but it's really an exploration of the design of railway MAPS (London's famous tube map being the most famous). There's a post in here somewhere, but it's a race against the information percolating on the one hand, and disappearing from memory on the other!wstachourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12447198404608861357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15935045.post-20322374854899075472009-07-27T02:01:51.420-05:002009-07-27T02:01:51.420-05:00The story of John Snow's handling of the chole...The story of John Snow's handling of the cholera outbreak is well known by epidemiologists (it is taught in the introductory epidemiology courses). Snow is considered one of the fathers of Epidemiology, and his detective work on this cholera outbreak is used to illustrate one of the first and best examples of how to determine the cause of an outbreak. It really is an amazing feat of logical reasoning when you consider that almost nothing was known about the cause of disease at the time.<br /><br />As Dzesika mentioned, Tufte considers Snow's outbreak map to be a great example of how graphical representation of data can lead to insights that are almost impossible to get otherwise. As she also mentioned, Tufte is highly regarded as an expert in the graphical presentation of information. Many of the epidemiologists and statisticians I work with see him as the definitive voice on how to convey information graphically, and I'd say I have to agree - given how Tufte rails against PowerPoint these days.<br /><br />You may be interested in Tufte's books (I can't give them a personal endorsement - I've only read a few of his shorter papers). One of the other graphics that he holds up as one of the best examples ever of a graphical representation of statistical data is a chart made by Charles Minard depicting the dwindling troops in Napoleon's 1812 foray to Moscow. Several of the faculty in our dept. have a poster of this chart, Tufte sells copies on his web site, and you can see it on the Wikipedia page for Minard.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13860812772132171202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15935045.post-10495706028375421472009-07-26T09:59:08.561-05:002009-07-26T09:59:08.561-05:00Edward Tufte did some work examining the cholera m...Edward Tufte did some work examining the cholera map as one of the earliest examples of effective information graphics. Can't remember off the top of my head which of his books this is in ... but check him out regardless - he's kind of like a god. :)Dzesikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11742046450843694768noreply@blogger.com