Page:Graphic methods for presenting facts (1914).djvu/23

 presented. The method of presentation is the fulcrum without which facts, as a lever, are useless.

The preparation and interpretation of simple charts and curves should be taught in the public schools as a part of arithmetic. The work of kindergarten nature now done in the lower grades of the public schools could very readily be extended so that the pupils would be making charts and curves without realizing that the work (or play) had any relation to mathematics. Text-books for geography are already making effective use of charts. In the public schools of Newark and of Trenton, New Jersey, grammar-school pupils are preparing charts and plotting curves relating to records which show the present condition and recent development of their home city. The principles of charting and curve plotting are not at all complex, and it is surprising that many business men dodge the simplest charts as though they involved higher mathematics or contained some sort of black magic.

If an editor should print bad English he would lose his position. Many editors are using and printing bad methods of graphic presentation, but they hold their jobs just the same. The trouble at present is that there are no standards by which graphic presentations can be prepared in accordance with definite rules so that their interpretation by the reader may be both rapid and accurate. It is certain that there will evolve for methods of graphic presentation a few useful and definite rules which will correspond with the rules of grammar for the spoken and written language. The rules of grammar for the English language are numerous as well as complex, and there are about as many exceptions as there are rules. Yet we all try to follow the rules in spite of their intricacies. The principles for a grammar of graphic presentation are so simple that a remarkably small number of rules would be sufficient to give a universal language. It is interesting to note, also, that there are possibilities of the graphic presentation becoming an international language, like music, which is now written by such standard methods that sheet music may be played in any country.

With oral and written language and with tabulated figures also the reader sometimes draws conclusions regarding the relative importance of different things from the comparative length of time or amount of space used in presentation. Graphic methods overcome this difficulty by showing quantitative facts in true proportions which give instantly the correct interpretation. In tabulations like that on page 4 it is only