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How Florence Nightingale used charts to reveal causes of death

After the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale used mortality diagrams to compare deaths from wounds, disease, and other causes among soldiers. Their colored sectors make the scale of the losses visible, but interpreting them means reading areas rather than just radii. Explore how a chart can strengthen an argument without establishing causation by itself.

8–10 min

Questions you could explore

  • Why is area different from radius when reading a chart?
  • How could separating causes of death change the message of the same mortality totals?

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