🚀 go-pugleaf

William Playfair (1759-1823), a Scottish engineer turned economist, entrepreneur,
and political commentator, is generally considered to be the father of modern
statistical graphics.  Among other achievements, he is credited with the 
invention of three widely used and important graphs: the pie chart, the
bar chart, and the line graph.  Although two centuries have passed since his
work, and despite increasing use of visual displays for the presentation and
analysis of data, very little is known about how people perceive, process,
and understand graphs.

The past decade has seen the emergence of a new area of research that seeks
to understand how people process graphical displays.  So far statisticians and
psychologists have been the principal contributors, but workers in other
disciplines have begun to pay attention to these developments in "cognitive
statistics".  To provide a forum for discussion and research, we propose the
formation of an interdisciplinary group which will convene every second
Wednesday, from 2:00p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Sidney Smith Hall, room 570,
beginning on November 2.  In recognition of William Playfair's pioneering
contributions, we have called this interest group The Playfair Society.  We
welcome the participation of faculty and graduate students at the University 
of Toronto.

Forthcoming Meetings of The Playfair Society:
Nov. 2   Stephan Lewandowsky  Displaying proportions and percentages
Nov. 16  Ian Spence           Graphs and psychophysics
Nov. 30  Colin Macleod        Graphs and cognition
Jan. 11  Robert S. Lockhart   Graphs and memory
Jan. 25  Ian Spence           The origins of graphs

For more information, please contact Ian Spence: utstat.toronto.edu!spence