HistData-package: Data sets from the History of Statistics and Data...
In HistData: Data Sets from the History of Statistics and Data Visualization

Description Details Author(s) References See Also Examples

The HistData package provides a collection of data sets that are interesting and important in the history of statistics and data visualization. The goal of the package is to make these available, both for instructional use and for historical research.

Package:	HistData
Type:	Package
Version:	0.8-2
Date:	2017-08-16
License:	GPL
LazyLoad:	yes
LazyData:	yes

Some of the data sets have examples which reproduce an historical graph or analysis. These are meant mainly as starters for more extensive re-analysis or graphical elaboration. Some of these present graphical challenges to reproduce in R.

They are part of a program of research called statistical historiography, meaning the use of statistical methods to study problems and questions in the history of statistics and graphics.

Descriptions of each DataSet can be found using help(DataSet); example(DataSet) will likely show applications similar to the historical use.

Data sets included in the HistData package are:

Arbuthnot: Arbuthnot's data on male and female birth ratios in London from 1629-1710
Armada: The Spanish Armada
Bowley: Bowley's data on values of British and Irish trade, 1855-1899
Cavendish: Cavendish's 1798 determinations of the density of the earth
ChestSizes: Quetelet's data on chest measurements of Scottish militiamen
Cholera: William Farr's Data on Cholera in London, 1849
CushnyPeebles: Cushny-Peebles data: Soporific effects of scopolamine derivatives
Dactyl: Edgeworth's counts of dactyls in Virgil's Aeneid
DrinksWages: Elderton and Pearson's (1910) data on drinking and wages
Fingerprints: Waite's data on Patterns in Fingerprints
Galton: Galton's data on the heights of parents and their children
GaltonFamilies: Galton's data on the heights of parents and their children, by family
Guerry: Data from A.-M. Guerry, "Essay on the Moral Statistics of France"
HalleyLifeTable: Halley's Life Table
Jevons: W. Stanley Jevons' data on numerical discrimination
Langren: van Langren's data on longitude distance between Toledo and Rome
Macdonell: Macdonell's data on height and finger length of criminals, used by Gosset (1908)
Michelson: Michelson's 1879 determinations of the velocity of light
Minard: Data from Minard's famous graphic map of Napoleon's march on Moscow
Nightingale: Florence Nightingale's data on deaths from various causes in the Crimean War
OldMaps: Latitudes and Longitudes of 39 Points in 11 Old Maps
PearsonLee: Pearson and Lee's 1896 data on the heights of parents and children classified by gender
PolioTrials: Polio Field Trials Data on the Salk vaccine
Prostitutes: Parent-Duchatelet's time-series data on the number of prostitutes in Paris
Pyx: Trial of the Pyx
Quarrels: Statistics of Deadly Quarrels
Snow: John Snow's map and data on the 1854 London Cholera outbreak
Virginis: J. F. W. Herschel's data on the oribit of the twin star gamma Virginis
Wheat: Playfair's data on wages and the price of wheat
Yeast: Student's (1906) Yeast Cell Counts
ZeaMays: Darwin's Heights of Cross- and Self-fertilized Zea May Pairs

Michael Friendly

Maintainer: Michael Friendly <friendly@yorku.ca>

Friendly, M. (2007). A Brief History of Data Visualization. In Chen, C., Hardle, W. & Unwin, A. (eds.) Handbook of Computational Statistics: Data Visualization, Springer-Verlag, III, Ch. 1, 1-34.

Friendly, M. & Denis, D. (2001). Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visualization. http://datavis.ca/milestones/

Friendly, M. & Denis, D. (2005). The early origins and development of the scatterplot. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 41, 103-130.

Friendly, M. & Sigal, M. & Harnanansingh, D. (2016). "The Milestones Project: A Database for the History of Data Visualization," In Kostelnick, C. & Kimball, M. (ed.), Visible Numbers: The History of Data Visualization, Ashgate Press, Chapter 10.

Friendly, M. & Wainer, H. (in progress). The Origin of Graphical Species. Harvard University Press.

Arbuthnot, Armada, Bowley, Cavendish, ChestSizes, Cholera, CushnyPeebles,

Dactyl, DrinksWages, Fingerprints, Galton, GaltonFamilies, Guerry, HalleyLifeTable,

Jevons, Langren, Macdonell, Michelson, Minard, Nightingale,

OldMaps, PearsonLee, PolioTrials, Prostitutes, Pyx,

Quarrels, Snow, Wheat, Yeast, ZeaMays

Other packages containing data sets of historical interest include:

The Guerry-package, containing maps and other data sets related to Guerry's (1833) Moral Statistics of France.

morsecodes from the (defunct) xgobi package for data from Rothkopf (1957) on errors in learning morse code, a classical example for MDS.

The psych package, containing Galton's peas data. The same data set is contained in alr3 as galtonpeas.

The agridat contains a large number of data sets of agricultural data, including some extra data sets related to the classical barley data (immer and barley) from Immer (1934): minnesota.barley.yield, minnesota.barley.weather.