Whether you use tableau, business objects, excel or something else all together, visualisation of data and in essence ideas, is a huge part of web analytics. It is much easier to understand a good graphic than a thousand words and in fact they can be a beautiful and persuasive call to action.

I was inspired by a recent article in the Economist about the best charts ever dating back 200 years, long before the computers and tools that we take for granted today. And these visualisations, so elegant yet functional and powerful, were earthshattering at the time, influencing politics, policy and spend on a nation level.

“Three of history’s best” include… 

1. Florence Nightingale, remembered as the mother of modern nursing, was also a keen statistician (and first female member of the Royal Statistical Society) and her graphic illustrating the key causes of mortality during war contributed towards the improvement in military hospitals as it shows at a glance how many soldiers died from preventable causes ie infections and disease as opposed to infections.

2. Charles Joseph Mindard’s very famous 1861 graphic depicting the Russian campaign of 1812 – has been called the “the best statistical graphic ever drawn” as it illustrates numbers of soldiers by width of the bar, against falling temperature, against distance there and back (very few returned).

3. William Playfair’s (a bit of a swindler admittedly) 1821 chart comparing the “weekly wages of a good mechanic” and the “price of a quarter of wheat” over time attempts to illustrate a decline in buying power for example, which for it’s time was again revolutionary.