Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts
A 1914 handbook by the engineer Willard C. Brinton, written for business men, social workers and legislators with no statistical training, on how to turn tables of figures into charts that persuade.
What it is
A 1914 handbook by the engineer Willard C. Brinton, written for business men, social workers and legislators with no statistical training, on how to turn tables of figures into charts that persuade. Its opening claim is that the person with the facts often loses the board meeting to the one who presents better. Across 17 chapters it moves from component bars and simple comparisons to time charts, curve plotting, logarithmic scales, maps with pins and beads, curve cards for executives and corporation annual reports. Most lessons come as paired figures: a real chart from a named source, such as the Bell Telephone pie chart or a Good Housekeeping drawing of washing machines, criticised and then redrawn. It closes with a 30-point checking list and 25 suggested rules, among them: avoid areas and volumes, show the zero line, and give every chart a complete title.
Why read it now
Most of Brinton's rules are now standard advice, and later perception research backs the core of them. Cleveland and McGill's experiments in 1984 found that people judge length along a common scale far more accurately than area or angle, which is his case against pie charts and scaled pictures. His note on the Cleveland Plain Dealer's circulation chart, which cut off the zero line so growth looked steeper, still describes the most common trick in sales decks and ads, and he treats it as a trust cost: the media buyer may doubt the whole chart. What has dated: the production chapters on Ben Day shading, engravers and map pins, his hope that one committee would fix a grammar of charts, and his rule of green for good and red for bad, which many colour-blind readers cannot tell apart. Use: before a proof chart goes into an ad or a pitch deck, check it against his questions on the zero line, stated dates, printed figures and a title that stands on its own.
Passages worth keeping
Ordinarily, facts do not speak for themselves. When they do speak for themselves, the wrong conclusions are often drawn from them.
الحقائق في العادة لا تتكلم وحدها، وإذا تُركت دون عرض جيد فكثيرًا ما يستنتج منها الناس نتيجة خاطئة.
the manner of presentation is ordinarily more important than the facts themselves.
حين يكون الهدف الوصول إلى قرار، فطريقة عرض الحقائق تهم غالبًا أكثر من الحقائق نفسها.
Circles of different size should never be compared. Horizontal bars have all the advantages of circles with none of the disadvantages
لا تقارن بين دوائر مختلفة الحجم لأن العين تخطئ في تقدير النسبة بينها، والأعمدة الأفقية تؤدي الغرض نفسه دون هذا العيب.
In advertising work it usually pays to avoid anything which might seem like exaggeration. Omitting the zero line makes the growth seem more rapid than it would if the zero line were included in a chart drawn to scale.
في الإعلان يحسن تجنّب كل ما يبدو مبالغة، وحذف خط الصفر من الرسم يجعل النمو يبدو أسرع مما هو في الحقيقة.
Make the title of a chart so complete and so clear that misinterpretation will be impossible.
اكتب عنوان الرسم كاملًا وواضحًا إلى حد لا يترك مجالًا لفهمه خطأ.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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