turning spreadsheets into something the eye trusts before the brain checks the math.
means the practice of representing numbers and relationships as visual shapes so patterns become obvious instead of buried in cells.
from the term rides in on the 1980s-90s explosion of computer graphics, but the impulse is ancient: florence nightingale's rose diagrams, playfair's 1786 bar charts, and minard's 1869 map of napoleon's russian disaster all did the job before there was a word for it.
minard's napoleon map — 1869, tracks 422,000 troops shrinking to 10,000
nightingale's coxcomb — 1858, showed disease killed more soldiers than battle
nyt covid tracker — 2020-2023, daily case maps read by millions
gapminder bubbles — hans rosling's animated wealth-vs-health charts, ted 2006