Presenting information in a visual way is not a novel concept. But best practices — such as the use of the x-axis to display a trend over time, for example — were once novel ideas. Rewind to the 18th century and a combination of creativity, passion and teamwork led to the birth of the x-axis.

 In 1765, Joseph Priestley (an English educator and polymath) published the results of his own big data projects (3,000 data points was big data back then). These influenced William Playfair (a Scottish political economist and engineer), who is credited with the first statistical line and bar charts.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here