A Hénon Map Inspired by an Artwork Inspired by a Hénon map

As part of my maths in museums work I was talking to someone at the National Galleries of Scotland. The world of art lies a little outside my comfort zone, which is partly why I was interested in talking to them: if I want to encourage other people to venture outside their comfort zones in the direction of mathematics I should probably practice what I preach.

Anyway, just outside the Modern One gallery there is a sculpted land feature created by artist Charles Jencks called Landform which you can see to the top-right of the embedded satellite view of the area below:

The sweeping curves and other-worldly, natural-but-not-quite feel to this formation reminded me of something, but I couldn't immediately remember what. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Jeff Goldblum popped up:

Interactive Chart: Diagram Showing the Numbers Living and Dead at the Several Ages from 20 - 40

The activity below is the last of four produced for the University of Nottingham's Florence Nightingale Comes Home project. Relatively succinctly (if morbidly) titled, Diagram Showing the Numbers Living and Dead at the Several Ages from 20 - 40 consists of three charts, each considering how many people out of a starting value of 10,000 have died by the time they reach particular ages, in a particular category. These categories are English soldiers, Englishmen, and Englishmen in healthy districts.

Interactive Chart: Diagrams Constructed on the Data Furnished by the Quarter Master General's Plans for Encampment

The activity below is the third of four produced for the University of Nottingham's Florence Nightingale Comes Home project. Less unwieldy than some of her other titles, Diagrams Constructed on the Data Furnished by the Quarter Master General's Plans for Encampment compares the population density of planned military encampments with those experienced in London.

There are two slides in the activity above: the first provides the data that Florence Nightingale was provided with, and an encouragement to think about how you might present this, either to understand it better yourself or to make a point to someone else. The second slide shows what she actually did with the data. How does it compare with what you thought on the first slide? Does it help you to understand the information better? What point do you think she was trying to make by choosing to represent it in this way?

Nightingale is known very well as "the Lady with the Lamp," but her contributions to mathematics are something that many people are unfortunately unaware of. She changed the face of (and attitudes towards) data visualisation in the UK, using easily understood visuals to tell the stories embedded in data that was otherwise unreadable to non-mathematicians, including politicians and royalty.

You can find the full collection of classroom resources for the Florence Nightingale at Home project at the link below:

Nightingale Classroom Resources

Want to learn more about data visualisation in statistics? Try this free course from Alison.

Interactive Chart: Representing the Relative Mortality of the Army at Home and of the English Male Population at Corresponding Ages

The activity below is the first of four produced for the University of Nottingham's Florence Nightingale Comes Home project. This one delves into Nightingale's not-so-snappily-titled Representing the Relative Mortality of the Army at Home and of the English Male Population at Corresponding Ages chart in which she compares data regarding mortality (death rates) amongst the general (male) British population for different age groups with the same data for men in the British Army.

You can see that deaths for those in the army are considerably higher than deaths for those who are not in the army, and you'd be forgiven for thinking this might be expected until you realise that this is not during a period of war and fighting: these individuals are living in army barracks in the UK in peacetime, and Nightingale's visualisation is intended to highlight the fact that they are dying in much greater numbers than should be expected. This was just one of many charts she devised to bring the desperate need for better living conditions for soldiers of the time to the attention of people who were in a position to do something about it.

Nightingale is known very well as "the Lady with the Lamp," but her contributions to mathematics are something that many people are unfortunately unaware of. She changed the face of (and attitudes towards) data visualisation in the UK, using easily understood visuals to tell the stories embedded in data that was otherwise unreadable to non-mathematicians, including politicians and royalty.

You can find the full collection of classroom resources for the Florence Nightingale at Home project at the link below:

Nightingale Classroom Resources

Want to learn more about data visualisation in statistics? Try this free course from Alison.