This series of pie charts are a graphic illustration of the life of William Playfair, the man who, stunningly, invented the time-series line graph, the bar graph and the pie chart between 1786 and 1801.
In celebration of William Playfair, The Londonist created this collection of humorous pie charts. The pie charts illustrate slightly arbitrary statistics. One deconstructs William Playfair's life into percentages of time spent in the various careers he embarked upon: engineer, journalist, silversmith and dodgy dealer. The silliest of the charts diagrams William Playfair's presence at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 versus everyone present who was not William Playfair, a ratio of 0.083 and 99.917%, respectively. The collection also includes the original pie chart, drawn by William Playfair in 1801.
Humorous Historical Graphs
These Pie Charts Illustrate William Playfair, Inventor of the Pie Chart
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