William Playfair
#19,601
Most Influential Person Across History
British mathematician, engineer and political economist
William Playfair's AcademicInfluence.com Rankings
William Playfairmathematics Degrees
Mathematics
#3010
Historical Rank
Measure Theory
#5085
Historical Rank
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Mathematics Engineering
Why Is William Playfair Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, William Playfair , a Scottish engineer and political economist, served as a secret agent on behalf of Great Britain during its war with France. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfair invented several types of diagrams: in 1786 the line, area and bar chart of economic data, and in 1801 the pie chart and circle graph, used to show part-whole relations. As a secret agent, Playfair reported on the French Revolution and organized a clandestine counterfeiting operation in 1793 to collapse the French currency.
