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Pictures, pretty pictures, and statistics.

I was temping in the mailroom of a [commodity] company’s world headquarters (or, if you like, the world headquarters of the [commodity] division of a much larger company; it all gets so complicated with all those interlocking boards of directors, you know?)—and from here on out, whenever someone speaks dreamily of the inherent superiority of private corporations over government institutions when it comes to being lean mean efficiency machines, I’ll think of the Shanghai junk mail. International inter-office mail went out twice a week via FedEx, see. You’d take whatever had accumulated in the Shanghai in-box, say, over the course of the week, and stuff it in a FedEx international overnight envelope, weigh it, print up the shipping invoice, and put it on the stack for the guy to pick up at 4:30. Now. Since the guy in Shanghai did almost everything by phone or fax or email, and anything physical that absolutely, positively had to be there overnight was, well, sent overnight (since none of the local stationery shops had watermarked stock certificate paper of the archaic dimensions favored by a Mexican law firm, we had to get that firm to send up a chunk of their blank stock via FedEx so that appropriate certificates could be printed at headquarters and then FedExed to a board meeting elsewhere so three people who wouldn’t otherwise be in the same place at the same time could sign them and then FedExed back to headquarters so that we could FedEx it back to the Mexican law firm—FedEx: it’s not just a transitive verb, it’s a racket), and didn’t languish in the interoffice in-box, well, what was left, twice a week, was junk mail. Seminar come-ons, offers on the latest businessprech books, stamp-​your-​logo-​on-​this-​ash-​tray-​and-​give-​it-​out-​as-​a-​sales-​incentive pitches, executive travel package deals, credit card offers, magazine subscription cards, and thinly veiled attempts to buff up a marketing database by urging you to renew your membership in this or that dodgy [commodity]-based professionals’ fraternity or who’s who directory, all of it gang-addressed to the names of every company executive on some three-year-old list (“Who’s X?” I’d ask, trying to sort the mail my first couple of days. —“X? X? Oh, right, he’s dead”)—and since they were all executives, logic (absent real information as to actual locations) dictates it all be sent to the home office. Including, you know, the stuff for the guy in Shanghai.

So twice a week—in addition to shopping for stationery in Mexico City—I was shovelling a snowdrift of 3×5 and 5×8 cardstock (matte and glossy), shrink-wrapped trial issues, and no. 10 windowed envelopes (“0.0% APR!—For the first 90 days, then…”) out of the Shanghai inbox, dumping them into a FedEx international overnight envelope, and blowing $35 so the guy in Shanghai could have his assistant open the envelope and dump all the contents straight into Shanghai’s paper recycling stream.

“Can we just skip it this time?” I asked, the first time I put together an international interoffice run.

“International shipments go out twice a week. Germany, Ireland, Shanghai, England. It’s all got to go.”

“Yeah, but the guy in Shanghai has nothing but junk mail.”

“So that’s what you send.”

So I sent it. What the hell. Wasn’t my money. Wasn’t the money of the person who was showing me the ropes. (The dodgy nature of anecdotal evidence aside, money to burn will be burnt. Whether it’s public or private. So.)

—But! That wasn’t what I wanted to point out. One of the seminar come-ons that I ended up keeping (everyone in the chain of command got one, including the guy who’d been dead three years) was for visual representations of data—you know, charts and graphs and such. At the top of the flyer was the arrestingly beautiful graph-map of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign, by Charles Joseph Minard, acclaimed in the flyer (and elsewhere) as the best graph ever done by anyone, anywhere.

There seems to be something of a Minard meme running around lately; at least, ever since I tucked that flyer away (along with a copy of Scientology’s Advance! magazine, addressed to an executive who’d moved on to other things, and a charming renn faire catalog ditto), I’ve seen it crop up in unexpected places, like tacked to the wall of Scott McCloud’s studio. (Actually, thinking about it, that’s not that unexpected.) —The most recent place (also, thinking about it, not that unexpected) is over at Ray Girvan’s criminally underappreciated cornucopia of miscellany, the Apothecary’s Drawer; there’s a dearth of permalinks for individual entries, but scrolling down to find the one dated 14 February 2003 will take you past so many other cool, time-wastin’ links that I’m sure you won’t mind. When you get there, you’ll find links to re-visions of Minard, Florence Nightingale’s contribution to the history of statistics, and other historical milestones in the field of statistical graphing—including this stunning 1880 stereogram, perhaps the first stereogram ever done, breaking out the population of Sweden from 1750 – 1875 by age groups. It might not be the best, but it’s certainly one of the most beautiful. In an austere, geeky way.

  1. Lisa    Feb 21, 12:19 pm    #
    You can blame Tufte, Edward R. Tufte of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and several other exceedingly expensive geeky coffee table books for the fame of that particular graphic. He's the one who brought it up out of obscurity, and has since become the Jakob Nielsen of stats illustrations, with numerous spin off seminars.

  2. skimble    Feb 22, 08:28 am    #
    Great post.

    I saw the (admittedly amazing) graphic in those SciAm-advert-friendly books too.

  3. Amy S.    Feb 22, 08:56 am    #
    That's the best graph ever ?! Please. It looks like a particularly overhyped First Thurs. installation featuring salvaged electrical wire and the World's Largest GMO Piece of Ginger Root. :p

    Besides, the *Salon* color scheme makes me break out in hives. :D

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