![]() When she returned, sheafs of stats in tow, it was to a Britain gripped by its own numerical fervor. “It cannot be ascertained correctly even for the Crimean Army.” Diagrams imagining what the Army’s population would look like if soldiers died at the same rate as other citizens. “The Army Medical Statistics… do not appear hitherto to have contemplated the necessity of ,” she later wrote. Her months in the war hospitals of Crimea provided her with plenty of opportunities to gather information, something that, in her view, those in charge had been fairly lax about. Nightingale had always had an affinity for math-as a child, she filled notebooks with tables of data about the fruits and vegetables in her garden, and according to one of her contemporaries, Francis Galton, she believed that statistics were the most effective way to “understand God’s thoughts.” “I feel I have been such a bad mother to you, to come home and leave you lying in your Crimean graves, 73 percent in eight regiments during six months from disease alone.” “Oh, my poor men who endured so patiently,” she wrote to a friend in late 1856, thinking back on the soldiers she had treated who hadn’t made it. Even if the most recent war had ended, there would be more, she reasoned, and without some kind of permanent reform, Nightingale feared all future wars would look much the same-full of needless deaths, even off the battlefield. Herbert Carmichael/CC BY 4.0īut in private, she had two things on her mind: death and statistics. Nightingale pictured with her famous lamp. In August of 1856, Nightingale headed home from her famous stint at Scutari hospital in Turkey, where, while working with injured and ill soldiers from the Crimean War, she successfully lobbied to improve conditions and to expand the role of nurses.* Upon her return to Britain, she was greeted as a hero-the press knew her as “a ‘ministering angel’,” and luminaries were eager to donate to training funds established in her name. In addition to caretaking and advocating, Nightingale was a dedicated statistician, constantly gathering information and thinking up new ways to compare and present it. The “Lady with the Lamp,” as she was known, still serves as a symbol for nurses everywhere.īut for every hour Nightingale spent burning the midnight oil to help a sick soldier, she likely spent another up late doing something else: working on some of the world’s first explicitly persuasive infographics. ![]() When someone mentions Florence Nightingale, who was born this week in 1820, one particular image likely comes to mind: A caring presence, head covered by a shawl, holding a lamp as she ministers to patients in the dark. The study measuring our rapid reaction to infographics is Lane Harrison et al Infographic Aesthetics: Designing for the First Impression Proc.Florence Nightingale’s most famous infographic, comparing causes of mortality for British soldiers in the Crimean War. On the interpretation and history of the rose diagram I recommend Hugh Small’s October 2010 paper presented to the Royal Statistical Society and his essay “ Nightingale’s Hockey Stick“, Lee Brasseur’s “Florence Nightingale’s Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams” Technical Communications Quarterly 14(2) 2005, RJ Andrews “ Florence Nightingale is a Design Hero” and the collection of essays published in Significance Magazine, April 2020. Key sources on the life of Florence Nightingale include Mark Bostridge Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (ed) The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale Vol 14, and Orlando Figes Crimea. #Florence nightingale graph how toI discussed the remarkable legacy of Florence Nightingale and the perils of misinformation in my new book The Data Detective (US/Canada) / How To Make The World Add Up (UK / International). Thanks to the team at Pushkin Industries, Mia Lobel, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fain, Jon Schnaars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan and Maya Koenig. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wyse. It is produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. But did Nightingale open Pandora’s Box, showing that graphs persuade, whether or not they depict reality?Ĭautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. Her charts convinced the great and the good that deaths due to filth and poor sanitation could be averted – saving countless lives. ![]() ![]() Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale (played by her distant cousin Helena Bonham Carter) is a hero of modern medicine – but her greatest contribution to combating disease and death resulted from the vivid graphs she made to back her public health campaigns. ![]()
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