Home / Brinton, Willard C. Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. New York: The Engineering Magazine Company, 1914. Internet Archive identifier: cu31924032626792 (Cornell University Library copy). The first American textbook on what we now call data visualization. / Passage

Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts

Brinton, Willard C. Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. New York: The Engineering Magazine Company, 1914. Internet Archive identifier: cu31924032626792 (Cornell University Library copy). The first American textbook on what we now call data visualization. 322 words

Too many of the statements, however, tell only a portion of the whole truth, and that portion is, of course, assumed to be the portion which the speaker most desires to have put forward. It is not ordinarily feasible in a speech to give all the facts over a series of years so that the hearer may draw any conclusions for himself. The whole system is weak in that the audience are forced to depend too largely on the statements made by the orator, rather than to draw conclusions of their own from data which are warranted to be authentic. When we have a larger number of people who know how to read curves, it will be a simple matter to present the arguments of a political campaign by means of a projecting lantern with properly prepared charts thrown on a screen. Even now the charts could probably be so made as to be understood

GENERAL METHODS 339

and correctly interpreted by the average person attending a political meeting, with resultant increase in the effectiveness of the arguments they support.

In municipal campaigns, especially, the lantern talk could be of very great interest to the voters if the slides were carefully prepared and arranged in a logical sequence. By using simple methods of charting, almost any kind of facts could be portrayed so that they would surely be correctly understood. Concise statements in conjunction with the charts should, of course, be used, somewhat as the main titles are placed under the illustrations of this book. Slides showing snappy questions could be thrown on the screen rapidly, and the succeeding slides could then answer the questions. Recent public improvements, bridges, etc., could be illustrated by maps and actual photographs. Pictures of fire apparatus and views showing the efficiency of the street-cleaning methods, etc., could be used to add interest and to bring out certain points in regard to the operation of specific departments.