Milestones in the History of Data Visualization: A Case Study in Statistical Historiography

The Milestones Project is a comprehensive attempt to collect, document, illustrate, and interpret the historical developments leading to modern data visualization and visual thinking. This paper provides an overview and brief tour of the milestones content, with a few illustrations of significant contributions to the history of data visualization. This forms one basis for exploring interesting questions and problems in the use of statistical and graphical methods to explore this history, a topic that can be called “statistical historiography.”

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