The impact that William Playfair had on the modern ideas of graphing and plotting. Many say that Playfair is the originator of the modern graph.

William Playfair As A.S. Levens states, in his book, Graphical Methods in Research, many of the currently popular graphical forms are credited to William Playfair (1759-1823), who was a draftsman for another well-known mathematician, James Watt, and brother of the well-known scientist John Playfair (1965: 155). William Playfair was the youngest of the Reverend James Playfair's three sons. The family resided in Dundee, Scotland. William Playfair was educated at home by his father until the age …

…reasons. He opened many eyes of economists and ruling parties in his day. He showed many people a different way to express numbers, and he showed people just how those numbers could be expressed. I definitely feel that the next time I look at a graph, it will have a separate meaning, not only the numbers expressed in the graph, but also that these numbers represent real people, and that they are not only numbers.