Peter posted a link to Charles Minard's 1871 obituary on InfoDesign last week. ID fans and regular readers of IDblog know that Minard was responsible for this graphic, which Tufte has described as "probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn."

I first saw this image back in 1984, when I was a geek programmer and member of the ACM (ya gotta love the web ... it turns out it was Jon Bentley's June 1984 Programming pearls column). I still have that image...it's framed and sits on my desk at work and, in retrospect, was my first toe-dipping into the pool that I would later come to know as information design. Given this, I was one of those who was a bit dismayed when STC published an article by Dragga and Voss in the August 2001 Technical Communication that criticized this diagram:

By omitting the human misery caused by that military campaign, the illustration could be said to constitute a distortion of the reality that escapes the statistics. The graphic isn't so much deceptive, however, as it is plainly inhumane—insensitive or indifferent to the human condition it depicts.

Frankly, I had found that the diagram was incredibly compelling in its description of the human misery. And at the time, STC members like Bill Sullivan were very critical (as were a number of TC readers who responded in subsequent issues in the editorial section). Why? Well for one, here is how Dragga and Voss suggested that Minard's diagram could be improved:

Say what?!? For the record, I have no doubt that some information graphics can mislead and/or dehumanize. But the authors have severely weakened their argument by suggesting that Minard's graphic could be improved by including (really horrible) pictographs that supposedly "add the vital element that was missing—the human beings who constitute the fatality figures."

Surely they jest. It is true that at first glance, the absence of hokey clip art crosses and men on horseback may make the reader work just a tad harder to understand the implication of the width of the line on the graph. But once realization hits, perhaps for some, the "image is gripping; and, especially today, it inspires bitter reflections on the cost to humanity of the madnesses of conquerors and the merciless thirst of military glory. "

The quote above came from the obituary mentioned above, written by his son-in-law. Charles Joseph Minard was in his late 80s when he drew this graph. He was able to spend this time on this pursuit in part because of his forced retirement as general inspector of bridges and roads. The obituary is interesting in other ways, in part because it is fairly long (and his son-in-law comments about the fact that he was slow to gain any accolades ... "[His] advancement may appear a little slow for the time in which he lived. The truth is that Mr. Minard did not know how to value himself, and it is only around the end of his career, when numerous and brilliant services were highly demanded of him, that just rewards came to reach him.")

There are other interesting snippets in the obituary:

In the middle of these delicate operations a terrible blow came to strike him; a son who was entering into his second year was taken from him in a few hours by one of those pitiless illnesses that decimate children.

and

Mr. Minard had since his most tender youth frail and delicate health, which was only supported by a sober and regular life, and which resisted in this way the attacks of the weather.

and

His devoted companion, one of his sons-in-law and his youngest daughter had the sad consolation of softening the bitterness of his last moments. His other daughter and his other son-in-law (the author of this notice), confined in Paris during the siege, only knew after the armistice the cruel loss they had suffered three months before.

For me, these are really emotive paragraphs (even without pictographs).

07:07 PM | linkme | home