Dr. Wainer is the distinguished research scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners and professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Wainer’s talk will be the discussion of eighteenth-century origins of the art, logic, and methods of data display, which emerged, full-grown, in William Playfair’s landmark 1786 trade atlas of England and Wales. The Scot single handedly popularized the atheoretical plotting of data to reveal suggestive patterns—an achievement that foretold the graphic explosion of the nineteenth century, with atlases published across the observational sciences as the language of science moved from words to pictures.
In Wainer’s presentation, he will explore how Playfair’s invention had been distorted by examining the interesting and inventive schemes for displaying data badly that have emerged over the past two centuries. Our contribution to this march against progress is a synthesis of the 12 most powerful techniques that seem to underlie many of the realizations found in practice. These 12 (the dirty dozen) are identified and illustrated.
In addition to his Monday’s lecture, Wainer will talk at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, October 21 on “Statistics and Death: Numbers and the Remembrance of Things Past.” The talk will take place in Lovell Lecture Room in Baxter Hall.
Wainer’s visit is free and open the public. A reception will follow his talk on Monday evening.