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Data Literacy for Social Studies

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R RECREATED DATA VISUALIZATIONS

This page showcases a project where students use the R programming language, renowned for its powerful data visualization capabilities, to recreate historical data visualizations with a modern twist. R’s flexibility enables a "slow reveal" technique, where visual insights unfold gradually, enhancing comprehension and engagement—an efficiency hard to achieve with traditional tools. The page features a scrollable gallery of historical data collections, each paired with student-crafted visualizations that breathe new life into the past. Additionally, it includes a few pre-existing visualizations not created by students, which are clearly marked and hold potential for future integration into this interactive domain, enriching the experience and bridging historical and contemporary data storytelling.

Collections

Nightingale's Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East (1858)

In 1858, nurse, statistician, and healthcare reformer Florence Nightingale published Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army. Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War. Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War. Among several data visualizations was this one, now known as the Nightingale Rose Diagram. It was used by Nightingale to demonstrate that epidemic disease, which was responsible for more British deaths in the course of the Crimean War than battlefield wounds, could be controlled by better sanitation, nutrition, ventilation, and shelter. An image of the original can be found at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Nightingale-mortality.jpg

Minard's Data Visualizations

Created by Charles Minard in 1869 to tell a story of the losses of Napoleon’s troops on their 1812 march to Moscow, this data visualization is regarded as one of the greatest data visualizations of all time. It consists of six variables: the size, location, distance, and direction of the army, dates of travel on the return trip, and changing temperatures on the return trip. The visualization shows how disastrous the trip was, largely because of the great distance traveled in subzero temperatures. The size of the army was 422,000 men at the beginning of the trip and by the time the army completed the march, fewer than 10,000 men remained. One version of the original hand-drawn data visualization can be found here: https://www.nealvonflue.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Minard-napolean-chart3.jpg

Statistics of the Negroes in the United States (1894)

This document, written by Henry Gannett and published in 1894, was funded by the John F. Slater Fund. The Slater Fund was an endowment established in 1882 by Slater for education of African Americans in the southern states. The preface to the document states that the Fund would "publish from time to time papers that relate to the education of the colored race. " Henry Gannett, who wrote the report, was a geographer for the U.S. Censuses of 1880, 1890, and 1900 and a driving force behind the data visualizations in the Statistical Atlases of the United States. The report is valuable for the statistics and data visualizations it provides, but is also laden with language reflecting the racist views of the time.

Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895)

Hull House Maps and Papers, published in 1895, is a series of essays and statistical information collected by Florence Kelley and her colleagues at Hull House, the settlement house at 335 South Halsted Street in Chicago. Florence Kelley was a pioneer in social reform. Kelley lived in Chicago from 1891 until 1899, leading and participating in a variety of projects including a wage and ethnicity census of the slums and tenements in Chicago; the reporting of cases and contagion in the smallpox epidemic of 1893; the enforcement of the universal primary education laws, and enforcing the provisions of the Illinois Factory Inspections Law of 1893. Hull House Maps and Papers is her most well-known work and represents years of research. This section contains recreations of two maps from the project.

Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Eleventh Census (1898)

Henry Gannett (1846-1914) served as geographer of the U.S. censuses of 1880, 1890, and 1900 and was a driving force behind the Statistical Atlases of the United States from those same years. This collection comes from the Statistical Atlas from the 1890 census. The 1890 census included a greater number of topics than any previous census and more than would be included in those immediately following. New entries on the census questionnaire included items about ownership and indebtedness of farms and homes; information about surviving Union soldiers, and the names of the Civil War widows. "Japanese" was also added as a racial category, along with "Chinese," "Negro," "mulatto," "quadroon," "octoroon," and "white."

Du Bois' Data Visualizations for the 1900 Paris Exposition

The 1900 Paris Exposition was a world’s fair held in Paris, France, April 15-November 12, 1900. It was intended to highlight accomplishments over the past century and to encourage people to look forward to what was to come in the 20th century. One building at the fair was devoted to the “social economy,” and the U.S. section featured an exhibit devoted to the history and “present conditions” of African Americans. Scholar, writer, and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois was asked to contribute a social study about African American life to the exhibit. Within the display were 63 charts, graphs, and maps, visualizing data mostly from the U.S. Census, Atlanta University reports, and various government agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor. This section contains recreated data visualizations featured in the exhibit.

American National Red Cross (1918)

At the beginning of the World War I, the American Red Cross was a small organization still in the process of developing its identity and programs. Within weeks of the outbreak of the war it dispatched The Mercy Ship, which brought surgeons, nurses, and medical supplies to Europe. When the United States declared war against Germany on April 6, 1917, the organization began a period of extraordinary growth. By the time the war ended in November 1918, the Red Cross had become a major national humanitarian organization and had made a major contribution to aid the wounded during World War I. This section contains two data visualizations produced by the Red Cross in 1918.

The Women's Voter Manual (1918)

The 1918 Woman Voter's Manual was published by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and includes an introduction by suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt. There are two data visualizations from the manual. The Victory Map shows the gains in state-level voting rights across the country. The other is intended to show how states that granted women the right to vote were more likely to have passed legislation considered beneficial to women and children, such as restrictions on child labor and work hours for women. A full text of the document can be found at: https://www.loc.gov/item/18007111/

Grainy Surface

Other Slow Reveal Resources

Full Lesson Plans

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