florence nightingale's pies

While researching about anesthesiology, I found out that Florence Nightingale was probably the pioneer in critical care medicine, having served as nurse in military camps in the Crimean War in the 1850's.

I also found out that Nightingale was an astute statistician! She was the first woman to be elected into the Royal Statistical Society (in UK) and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

If anything, she could very well be called the mother of graphical representation of data. One of her works is this pie chart known as the polar area diagram, the Nightingale rose diagram, or what we now call as the circular histogram.

florence nightingale's report on the causes of army morbidity circa 1854-1856 (source: Wikipedia)

An intensivist and a statistician at the same time! Wow.