D O C U M E N T - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

D O C U M E N T

picTorial sTaTisTics
folloWing The Vienna MeThod1

otto Neurath

Science tells us about stars, stones, plants, and animals, and likewise
about people and their life together. Science supports its laws and
observations based on experience.

In its most modern incarnation, science is especially interested in

preserving facts visually. Astronomical facts are being photographed
directly, while the trajectories of stars, specters, and crystalline struc-
tures are captured by photography in an indirect way. Photography
shows us the behavior of ants and children, and even with audio
recordings we are being acquainted through visualization. Where static
photography is not suffi cient, cinema jumps into the fray. A fl eeting
comparison between older and more recent research will teach us about
this expansion of the visual protocol, with recording machines taking
the place of manual entries.

Cependant, it is not only protocols that are using visual devices; le

representation of results also increasingly uses them.

Pedagogy seeks to invigorate the students’ activity not least by sub-

jecting simple observations or scientifi c results to analysis, which in
some cases may also include the combination of new forms.

Especially since Comenius’s Orbis Pictus the problem of how to

“Bildstatistik nach Wiener Methode,” Die Volksschule 27, Non. 12 (1931): 569–79.

108

est ce que je:10.1162/arTM_a_00169

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spread enlightenment with the help of methods of visualization has
been treated again and again.

The drawing and the image are being joined by the model. We won’t

be able to show successfully how gradually a system emerges from the
depiction of individual things and assorted oddities until we have fur-
ther developed our means of visual representation. From enabling
images to become mobile—already early on, using all kinds of primitive
shutter mechanisms—it is only a small step to show models in motion.
In the simplest of cases, images or models reflect facts that can at
any rate be grasped easily. Beyond that, images and models may repre-
sent, either at a smaller scale or based on a selection, systems of facts or
masses of things that the eye is not capable of perceiving all at once. Parmi
these we count all spatial representations of the orbits of planets—
often using special designs dating from the Renaissance—in order to
show eclipses of the sun and the moon, the rise of the seasons, etc..
Among these we count all kinds of plans and maps, especially the pla-
niglobes and planispheres that take the place of unwieldy globes.

In this way flat or corporeal images early on became dominant in

the fields of astronomy, géographie, mineralogy, botany, and zoology.
Physics and chemistry are following suit. The 19th-century technology
fairs and the museums of technology that developed out of them have pro-
vided an impressive education of the masses. The hygiene fairs and
hygiene museums followed suit.

Where the technology museums had focused on the machine as

man’s tool that was treated as the achievement of inventors—the
ancient heroes of the modern age—, the hygiene museums devoted
themselves to the human body, its composition and functions, the devel-
opment of diseases and their elimination. In the process both types of
museum also touched on the social effects of technology and hygiene
and they took note of the social conditions under which technical and
hygienic innovations emerge; cependant, only a small part of the optical
devices served these goals.

The Visual Mapping of social condiTions

The visual representation of social conditions is a problem that cannot
be tackled casually; it demands carefully elaborated methods, depuis
here we are not dealing with a simple, more or less schematic depiction
but with a visual representation of large quantities of things and the
relations between them.

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109

In literature we occasionally find—more frequently in recent
decades—efforts to represent statistical facts using images. The most
widespread method is to show a greater quantity of people or things by
means of a larger image of a person or a thing.

This rough method does not permit any serious visual compari-
son, especially since the figure whose height has been doubled will,
adjusted to regular proportions, have to represent an expanse of more
than double the size and an even larger volume. The ensuing visual
insecurity is not apt to leave a good memory of the proportional rela-
tionship in question.

On military maps the tactical units (companies, squadrons, batter-

ies) were entered by means of conventional signs based on their num-
bers. Over two pages, the ordre de bataille of two fighting armies would
show the quantified equipment of both military corps with their indi-
vidual divisions in a systematic order of signs. Cependant, this method
was almost never applied when social facts were to be depicted.

More precise scientific and popularizing representations would
use a confusing array of methods for visualization: squares, circles,
rectangles, and curves were often shown randomly throughout the
same book, even on the same page. In another chapter [. . .] J'ai
demonstrated that these methods are not pedagogically equivalent,
even where they deliver the same mathematical results. The fact that
one square has twice the surface area of another square can only be
calculated mathematically; it cannot be seen with one’s eye. What can
be done handily, cependant, is to quantitatively compare two aligned
rectangles with one other rectangle that is isolated from the others.
In this way the entirety of the graphic means of representation can be
analyzed pedagogically.

All these graphic visualizations suffer from the fact that it remains

unclear what the representation refers to. A green column can refer to
births as well as automobiles. Speaking signs are therefore an important
requirement for such representations: A larger quantity of things is to be
represented by a larger quantity of speaking signs.

On this basis the Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna

began, dans 1924, to work systematically on the creation of an interna-
tional pedagogical method for the representation of social facts.

The task consisted in making important quantitative relationships of

social life easy to grasp and to remember. Most people, including those
who might respond well to quantitative relationships, are intimated by

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numbers, regardless of whether they appear in astronomic, physical, ou
sociological representations. Curves and surface areas also intimidate
many, and not without reason. Most people’s memory is not capable of
handling this kind of thing.

Some people may just about retain certain statistical details they
stumbled upon by chance, but they lack the possibility of comparing
such numbers to others, to integrate them within a larger edifice. La plupart
people first have to be sensitized to appreciate social proportions, surtout-
cially for dimensions on the scale of humanity.

Only on such a basis can social and economic observations be suc-

cessfully constructed. Without a statistical basis familiar to us, any-
thing else we learn becomes either an entity without contours or a
teeming mess from which particularities stand out for entirely coinci-
dental reasons.

An example. Whether we are talking about export opportunities
for European and American markets or about war and revolution, it is
essential to know how approximately the quantity “yellow people”
relates to the quantity “white people.” Experience shows that individu-
als with an academic degree, not counting the specialists, will be
inclined to think that there are about four times as many “yellows” as
“whites.” People with less education will settle for only three times or
twice as many. Those, cependant, who for example at the Museum of
Society and Economy in Vienna [. . .] have engrossed themselves in the
panel devoted to “The World’s Ethnic Groups” are unlikely to forget
that there are roughly as many “yellows” as “whites.” How to explain
such grave errors, especially among the reading intelligentsia? Today’s
publications are full of imprecise emotional expressions. We hear about
China’s “incredible density” and are even inclined to apply this to the
entire national territory including its deserts and steppes; we hear
about “the yellows’ intense procreation”; about “yellow masses in the
Far East,” and we are reminded of the proclamation: “Peoples of
Europe, Preserve Your Holiest Goods!” None of this is conducive to cre-
ating the image: roughly as many “yellows” as “whites.”

On the picture panel one figure signifies 100 millions de personnes. Many

statisticians are aghast at such rough approximations that graphically
capture only figures of no less than 25 million at best. Rounded up, un
figure representing 25 million may, if need be, represent 13 million.
Meanwhile groups of fewer people, 10 ou 5 million, are swept under the
table completely.

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The critical supporters of precision forget that even in cartography

there is simplification based on the chosen scale—only bad cartogra-
phers apply scale proportionally—and that as a pedagogue, a good car-
tographer reduces scale not automatically, but based on semantics;
these strident critics forget that the average person constantly makes
mistakes of much larger dimensions. Nous, the representatives of the
“Vienna Method,” on the other hand, take the position that it is better to
memorize simplified images of numerical quantities than to forget more pre-
cise numbers.

We just conceded in all frankness that during the process of
rounding down difficulties may arise. Any experienced pedagogue will
be thinking of the tricks that can be used to overcome such difficulties.
For it should be clear that the “Vienna Method,” unlike other tradi-
tional graphic methods, is not an apparatus that turns series of num-
bers into quantitative images. The “Vienna Method” presupposes
creative pedagogical work. You attain pedagogical effects through simpli-
fications, through highlighting. The one who best understands what to
omit is the best teacher. This is true even in those cases where the stu-
dent has to teach himself. The pedagogue’s task is to avoid detours that
take up too much time, as well as the provision of suitable educational
tools.

Not every numerical quantity is conducive to being represented. C'est
therefore not advisable to present the learner with too many quantita-
tive images. We have to protect ourselves from overloading our mem-
ory. It would be a grave mistake to replace tedious series of numbers
with equally tedious, unwieldy series of drawn humanoid figures.

The capable pedagogue will choose suitable quantitative images as a
departure point for comparative analysis. Par exemple, how many issues
are raised if we place panels such as The World’s Ethnic Groups,
Economic Models and Religions from the folder “Society and
Economy” (Bibliographical Institute Leipzig Publishers) next to each
other. The student’s active task consists especially in analyzing the
quantitative images; après tout, geographical maps are also not created by
those who study them, much less the representations of plants or the
stuffed animals in a zoological collection.

The quantitative images are as it were the objective correlatives from the

sociological collection. The students should be familiarized with these
representations of social facts. Experience shows that the care we extend
to these depictions cannot be great enough. Teaching aids that stimulate

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Gerd Arntz/Otto Neurath, Mächte der Erde, 1930. Detail from Gesellschaft und

Wirtschaft. Bildstatistisches Elementarwerk, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1930.

Image courtesy of Gerd Arntz, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2016.

activity and help with successful self-study are of such importance that
their producers carry great responsibility. In part this corresponds with
certain principles of the Montessori method. The production of quantita-
tive images by the students themselves takes second place.

The quantitative images have to be produced in such a way that
certain conventions make them easier to grasp. In this way all the serial
visualizations presented at the Museum of Society and Economy in
Vienna begin, in the spirit of written texts, in the upper left corner and
end in the lower right. From the observer’s point of view, proximity
equals the present, while distance is also temporal distance. Le
arrangement of structured columns to the right and left of a middle
axis, among other things, heighten the impression created by compara-
ble panels.

Just as students may themselves create sketches of maps and small
reliefs even though they pursue geography with the help of good atlases

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113

whose maps were drawn by good pedagogues, those learning the
Vienna Method may produce quantitative images even where they do
not create what is being taught in a sociology lesson.

Good quantitative images supplement each other to form a system.

Like objects are always represented by like symbolic forms and colors.—A
critic from Sweden has called this a “Renaissance of Hieroglyphs.”
Even relatively small changes can shift the pedagogical effect of a
quantitative image considerably.

The production of quantitative images at school can be success-
fully accomplished even by the youngest (5–9 years old) in all kinds of
ways. They draw rows of figures, stamp them using potatoes, cut out
figures and glue them next to each other. Not in every case will the
“statistical fact” come to the fore. If the task is to compare children who
spent their Sunday outdoors to those who spent Sunday in town, un
amazing child may well draw the group of kids who are outside numer-
ically correctly, as climbers between the branches of a tree. In this early
period the child’s competence in the area of symbolic representation is
often remarkable.

As is to be expected, at higher levels, the images are often exces-

sively overloaded with detail. The imitation of known images plays an
increasing role. We recommend that at this stage quantitative images
should be composed of readymade elements.

To this aim, the Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna has

produced combinable signs from which the wall displays and sketches
for the museum’s publications are being composed.

The innovative magnetic displays at the Vienna Museum for

Society and Economy are designed especially for the purposes of group
instruction. These are iron tablets to which signs tied to permanent
magnets adhere due to magnetism. If you wish to demonstrate carto-
grams containing statistical data it will be enough to fasten a map
drawn on paper to four magnets on the iron tablet. It is possible to
place the iron signs on the piece of paper because their magnetism is
strong enough. The magnetic cards containing data are very suitable for
adding an optical dimension to history lessons and especially for show-
ing changing quantitative fluctuations without using technically
imperfect chalk.

The “Vienna Method” disposes of a range of innovative instruc-
tional aids of which we have mentioned a few. They accompany individu-
als from their 4th or 5th year and during the period of adult instruction.

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Trials among a group of Montessori children who were supplied with a
magnetic card yielded interesting results.

An interest in faraway countries exists in children from a very early
âge. Life in the planisphere with its inhabitants and products becomes
a substitute for the tales from 1001 Nights. More generally we can say
that pictorial statistics are particularly suited for representing great oppo-
des sites. The English can be visually distinguished more plausibly from
the Japanese than, par exemple, the English from the French. The trop-
ics can be more easily differentiated from Central Europe than the lat-
ter from Eastern Europe.

Cependant, in the area of quantities, aussi, grand, though not overly

grand, fluctuations are best captured through pictorial statistics.
Fluctuations such as 6, 8, 5, 2 are more accessible to the eye than fluc-
tuations such as 106, 108, 105, 102, ou 680,000, 5,000, 200.

In this way pictorial statistics pushes toward the representation of
great contrasts, great fluctuations; it educates humanity to survey facts
on a grand scale. In this way the eye assimilates what is essential swiftly
and with great confidence.

iMage-Based pedagogy

In any case, pictorial statistics are eminently useful as a supplement to
traditional teaching methods. It may be expected that they will become
an essential part of a image-based pedagogy whose development we are
witnessing.

Modern man is first of all an ocular being. Advertising, the educa-

tional billboard, cinema, illustrated newspapers and magazines are
broadly responsible for the education of the masses. Even those who
read many books are inspired more and more by images and series of
images. When we are tired we may still quickly take notice of some-
thing in an image that we would be unable to assimilate through
reading.

Beyond that, image-based pedagogy is a means to open otherwise

unattainable educational possibilities for less educated adults who tend
to be more susceptible to optical stimulation, and for disadvantaged
youth.

The experience in national education shows that through pictorial
statistics based on the Vienna Method, knowledge and an understand-
ing of how things connect are spread without the feelings of inferiority
experienced by students when they confront piles of words they are

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115

unable to master. This is why pictorial statistics is so desirable, surtout-
cially also for less gifted or less educated children. They gain the
impression that they are able to handle social formations like units
found in a construction kit. Beyond the results of polls and individual
psychological experiments we will probably soon have access to more
precise material.

Experimental schools in Vienna and Berlin are now beginning
to orient their instruction broadly—to the extent that this is possible
already—toward pictorial statistics and image-based pedagogy. C'est
evident that pictorial statistics are very useful for helping instruction
focus. [. . .] In terms of contents, pictorial statistics bring much inspira-
tion, yet they may equally lead us into the realm of mathematics and
graphics.

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Gerd Arntz/Otto Neurath, Gewerkschaften der Erde, 1930. Detail from Gesellschaft und

Wirtschaft. Bildstatistisches Elementarwerk, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1930.

Image courtesy of Gerd Arntz, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2016.

116

We should, cependant, be careful not to view pictorial statistics only as

a supplement to regular instruction, for example as a reservoir that sup-
plies material for lessons in arithmetic, or as an illustration of certain
opérations. Pictorial statistics go beyond such visual simplification of
math teaching that has been advocated by many. They can communicate
visual information that can be dealt with arithmetically only much later.
An example: We are learning that six-year-olds, even younger
enfants, are capable of comparing “relative distributions” without
much difficulty (Par exemple, they can distinguish a room containing
two figures from a second one, containing three) even before they are
capable of arithmetic division and of establishing relationships between
the quotients of different surfaces and figures. It is surely opportune
to take advantage of such optical precocity to visually acquaint the stu-
bosses, in this and other areas, with problems they will be able to master
fully only later through arithmetic and logic.

Ce, cependant, means in a certain way to turn away from primarily

scholastic traditions focused on words and concepts that often goes
against an empirical perspective, while image-based pedagogy favors
empiricism. Pictorial statistics operate from the onset with spatiotem-
poral formations while in verbal language we have the possibility of
using combinations devoid of meaning that we can eliminate only with
difficulty.

Yet even those who do not consider the possibilities inherent in an

image-based pedagogy essential will acknowledge its importance for
national education and schooling based on the experience we have gath-
ered with pictorial statistics following the “Vienna Method.”

Finally it should not go unnoticed that image-based pedagogy,
especially pictorial statistics, has international relevance. Words carry
more emotional elements within themselves than images based on
quantities; these can be assimilated without demur by people from dif-
ferent countries or parties; words divide, images connect.

En outre, a large part of humanity is not yet using one of the
great Western languages. Once these illiterates (in the sense I men-
tioned) learn Western languages and, through this, the functioning of
complex social formations within foreign expressions, they frequently
lose the innocent stamina they possessed at their primitive stage. UN
vacuum is created that is difficult to fill. Supplemented by further
image material, pictorial statistics and image-based pedagogy with
their quantitative images, organizational charts, and cartograms are

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6
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117

capable of capturing the modern world much more immediately and
create a bridge. Experience with nomadic tribes in Asia who learnt how
to read maps relatively quickly points in this direction.

In this way the study of pictorial statistics within the context of

grappling with humanity’s profound civilizational problems is no doubt
opportun. Pictorial statistics is not only a question of school education but
beyond that of the education of mankind.

BiBliography

1. Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft. Bildstatistisches Elementarwerk mit 100

sechsfarbigen Tafeln. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig.

2. Die bunte Welt. Bildstatistisches Bilderbuch. Verlag Wolf, Wien.
3. Weltwirtschaft. B/w brochure of the Museum of Society and

Économie, Vienna.

4. Wirtschaftsgeschichte. B/w brochure of the Museum of Society and

Économie, Vienna.

5. Entwicklung von Landwirtschaft und Gewerbe in Deutschland. B/w

brochure of the Museum of Society and Economy, Vienna.

6. Mengenbilder und Kartogramme. B/w brochure of the Museum of

Society and Economy, Vienna.

7. Technik im Druck. Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Wien.
8. Wien in Vorbereitung. Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Wien.
9. Bildstatistik nach Wiener Methode und die Schule (in press).

Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Wien.

10. Das Bild. Mars 1927 to February 1930.
11. Die Form. Issue 2, Janvier 1930. Article: Otto Neurath. Le

Sachbild.

12. Articles by F. Bauermeister and M. Reidermeister in “Wien und die

Wiener.” Special issue of Österreichische Gemeindezeitung.

Tr anslaTed by sven spieker

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