Graphic Representations
Glenn J. Myatt, Wayne P. Johnson · 2011
The French cartographer Jacques Bertin (1918 - 2010) extended the reach of semiotics into graphics systems. To help designers and statisticians understand how to create diagrams, networks, and maps with relevant information that could more easily be understood, Bertin developed a semiotic theory for graphic communication (Bertin, 1983). From the 1980s on, as computer graphics advanced, various research efforts incorporated Bertin’s work into visualization and statistical graphics. Among them was Leland Wilkinson, who recognized that quantitative graphics, like language, had a deeper structure. Wickham designed ggpplot2 primarily for statisticians (Wickham, 2009). ggpplot2 was based on Wilkinson’s graphical grammar and implemented as a loadable package for the System R, a widely used open-source software environment for statistical computing and graphics. In recent work by Michael Bostock and Jeffrey Heer, aspects of the grammar-based approach have been implemented for general use in Web browsers using JavaScript and Protovis libraries. Controlled Vocabulary Terms computational statistics; graphical model