70. William Playfair

“It is a mistake to conceive of choice and decision-making as a process of selecting from existing options according to a fixed formula. That omits the most important element of decision-making, namely the creation of new options.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Yesterday, I discovered William Playfair, the founder of graphical methods of statistics. I watched a talk by Brett Victor, who rose to fame as a master user interface architect at Apple. He mentioned William Playfair and that got me curious about him. Playfair realized that different representations of information change how we understand them. He transformed data tables, the typical form of representation, into graphs and charts. By making the data visual relationships could better be discovered. He created a new option for interacting with data.

What kind of man could create such a novel way of thinking? The following Wikipedia excerpt might provide some insight:

"Playfair had a variety of careers. He was in turn a millwright, engineer, draftsman, accountant, inventor, silversmith, merchant, investment broker, economist, statistician, pamphleteer, translator, publicist, land speculator, convict, banker, ardent royalist, editor, blackmailer and journalist."

I love it so much! He was a true Renaissance man. But sadly, his life took a turn for the worse later on.

"He spent the last days of his laborious but irregular life without the competence which well-directed talent generally acquires, and his death was hurried on by anxiety of mind."

"...and was left in age and infirmity to regret that he had neglected his own interests to promote those of the public."

I disagree with the sentiment of the previous quote. My interpretation is he regretted not inventing new options to choose from. He saw, in essence, "a table of data" and accepted it without questioning it, ignoring the opportunity to transform it into a new representation. He failed to use his creative faculties. He forgot what it meant to be a Renaissance man, i.e. “a man can do all things if he will,” (Leon Battista Alberti).

When we are perhaps stuck and full of regret let us remember to embrace what may be our last opportunity for creativity and invent a new option or representation. Our final decision will be to reject all available options.