It has been said that the famous nurse Florence Nightingale was the first to use diagrams for presenting statistical data. This is not true, of course, but she may have been the first to use them for persuading people of the need for change. Florence Nightingale created a diagram to force the British Government to create cleaner and safer hospitals. The war hero stories where soldiers died on the battling fields presented a much more heroic picture, than the death of thousands of soldiers in hospital beds. They died because the hospitals were filthy and unsafe. Nightingale wanted to make a change so she designed and delivered a 'rose' diagram to the British Government. People have very limited time to make decisions, so a graph must be informative and understood at one glance. Her diagram was just that! Nightingale's diagram conveyed a message of hope.
Nightingale's diagram saved million of lives
Diagrams can be a brilliant propaganda tool, because you can easily read statistical data in a glance, which would otherwise have taken a much longer time to read and understand in text. I personally think diagrams often need a counterpart, because one diagram often does not show the whole picture. You need something to compare the diagram with, in order to put the information in context. Some diagrams do this by having year-on-year results, while others simply show data from one event. So there are good and bad diagrams.
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