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William Playfair

1759 - 1823

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William Playfair (22 September 1759 – 11 February 1823), a Scottish engineer and political economist, served as a secret agent on behalf of Great Britain during its war with France. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfair invented several types of diagrams: in 1786 the line, area and bar chart of economic data, and in 1801 the pie chart and circle graph, used to show part-whole relations. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William Playfair has received more than 383,156 page views. His biography is available in 20 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 18 in 2019). William Playfair is the 190th most popular engineer (up from 199th in 2019), the 2,350th most popular biography from United Kingdom and the 19th most popular British Engineer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 380k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 51.17

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 20

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 3.60

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.74

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William Playfairs by language


Among ENGINEERS

Among engineers, William Playfair ranks 190 out of 323. Before him are Louis Dollo, Agustín de Betancourt, Joseph Strauss, Nikolay Kamov, Gene Kranz, and Jon Postel. After him are W. Ross Ashby, Seymour Cray, Evgeny Paton, Bassel al-Assad, Vasily Mishin, and Semyon Lavochkin.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1759, William Playfair ranks 27. Before him are Aloys I, Prince of Liechtenstein, Johann Christian Reil, Franz Krommer, William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths, and Carl Johan Adlercreutz. After him are Jakob II Bernoulli, Ferenc Kazinczy, Matsudaira Sadanobu, Maximilian von Montgelas, Andrey Voronikhin, and Cornelio Saavedra. Among people deceased in 1823, William Playfair ranks 20. Before him are Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Princess Amélie Louise of Arenberg, Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, Markos Botsaris, and Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus. After him are Daniel Steibelt, Luis María de Borbón y Vallabriga, Zacharias Werner, Johann Baptist Allgaier, Princess Caroline of Nassau-Usingen, and Antonio Nariño.

Others Born in 1759

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Others Deceased in 1823

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Playfair ranks 2,350 out of 7,765. Before him are Ian Hill (1952), Gordon Jackson (1923), Jeremy Thorpe (1929), Brenda Milner (1918), Charles Burney (1726), and Kevin McNally (1956). After him are Laurence Doherty (1875), Ford Madox Ford (1873), Luke Howard (1772), Alexander Dalrymple (1737), Ernest Bevin (1881), and Burial (2000).

Others born in United Kingdom

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Among ENGINEERS In United Kingdom

Among engineers born in United Kingdom, William Playfair ranks 19. Before him are Alexander Cunningham (1814), Robert Stephenson (1803), Hertha Ayrton (1854), John Loudon McAdam (1756), John Bagot Glubb (1897), and John Smeaton (1724). After him are W. Ross Ashby (1903), André Waterkeyn (1917), Frederick W. Lanchester (1868), William Froude (1810), Mal Evans (1935), and Robert W. Paul (1869).

British born Engineers

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