Florence Nightingale - Statistical Links

Florence Nightingale's role in the history of statistics and statistical graphics is of interest for many reasons. Of greatest interest here, was her role as a social activist and view that statistical data, presented in charts and diagrams, could be used as powerful arguments for medical reform.

Influenced perhaps by Quetelet in Belgium, and William Farr in England, she developed the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics. In statistical graphics, she is often credited as the inventor of the polar-area diagram (or "Coxcomb" diagram, rose diagram), although this graphic form was used earlier by both Andre-Michel Guerry (1829) and William Farr (1852).

• The coxcomb diagram
• Florence Nightingale's mathematical education
• The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, by Lynn McDonald, University of Guelph.
• Florence Nightingale Museum
  • Florence Nightingale - The Passionate Statistician with a nice Flash animation constructed by Mike Pearson and Ian Short at Understanding Uncertainty. See also their Mathematics of the Coxcombs page for a discussion of how these diagrams are created.
  • Florence Nightingale's Statistical Diagrams

• Kopf, E. W. (1916), "Florence Nightingale as Statistician," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 15, 388-404.