Category: Information, Quantitative Display of

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The rather dry article appearing in the 14 November 1903 issue of Scientific American discussing the comparison of raw and finished products in the printing and paper making industry survives itself in a glorious way with a captivating infographic explaining things in terms of units of Trinity Churches and Statues of Liberty–and that’s what makes the difference in presentation of data and the artistic display of statistical information.

And so:

[Source:  Scientific American, 14 November 1903]

 After everything is said and done these images remind me (unfairly, probably) of Buckminster Fuller’s idea for an enormous floating city named Triton.  All things being equal, Triton probably could have worked, for good or not.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2123   

This image comes relatively early in the history of the German rearmament and the subsequent march to WWII.  These infographics come from the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig) in March 1932 and depict the various low levels to which the German military had reached. Germany’s military situation was dictated by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles some six months after the Armistice was signed, the terms of which were decided over months and for which Germany was not an invited member to the negotiations. In any event, the protocols of the treaty were fairly strict (some felt not strict enough, while others like J.M. Keynes felt the economic restrictions and concessions were too harsh), and so far as the military was concerned the army, navy, and air force were all severely limited in size and development.

The 1919 treaty began to unravel in earnest by 1932, at which time Germany–reeling still from the Depression and from the economic hardships and concession placed on it by the treaty, suffering large unemployment and with a disastrous economy–by June of that year had decided to ignore the military restrictions of Versailles and sought to rearm.  By July Germany withdrew from the nearly half-trillion-dollar (in 2013 American dollars) concessions agreement, and started to accumulate funds for a vast new military restructuring program. In a year Hitler was chancellor, and the Nazi Party made huge gains in the Reichstag.  And the war was in motion.

Few people in Germany would have to be reminded that the military was in dire straights, but these infographics hammered the point home in a very stark visual manner. 

(“Germany is Disarmed!” shows the difference in man- and fire-power between 1913 anbd 1932)

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I’ve accumulated 50 or so paper computer/calculators of various shapes and sizes and descriptions, ranging from calculating the mileage for a 1959 Rambler, the ground speed for a B-25, radiation dosimetry, one-handed bridge, nuclear weapon yields, political history quizzes, and many others–including this “Ball of Fame” baseball historical paper volvelle. 

I’ve seen this online a bit, but I’ve not seen the guts/data of the thing, so I decided to take mine apart and scan it so that the baseball folks among the readers of this blog can make their own. I’ve scanned at 200 dpi so there’s plenty of detail–just print out the four sections, grab your exacto knife, and you’re in business. 

The computer has an awful lot of detail, the most interesting to me being located at top-center, for “Park Dimensions”–in that quarter-inch square window we see info for the team, nickname, name of park, seating capacity, and the distances to the five points of the fences. Terrific!  The rest of the info, fpr the years 1901-1960:

• Batting (showing leading batter, team, average, home run leader, leading team for home runs, rbi leader and rbi team leader).

• Pitching (showing leading pitcher, w/l record, team, KO leader, team strike outs, ERA pitching and team leaders.

• Pennant winner: (showing the winning team, manager, W-L, and winning percentages.

• Stolen bases: leader and team leader.

• And, lastly, MVP. 

There are bits and pieces that wouldn’t fit the scanner, but they’re replaceable. 

Have fun!

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The fossil record is generally one of the richest and most
compelling histories of the development of life on earth, a far-reaching,
cumulative record of extraordinary importance. 
There are the other, occasional, fossils that stand only by themselves,
and seem to have almost no use in the current time, living almost entirely
within themselves. The following statics seem to fall into that category—they
seem to be only a tombstone for an era, providing nothing except to tell the story
of what happened, existing only for that purpose, with no compelling
utilization for anything outside understand a small piece of life for the year
the stats were gathered. 

The cause for this sentiment was found in a government
publication called Expense of Convicts of the United States  (Letter from the
Comptroller of the Treasury…), 1 February 1859).  The following comes in the first paragraph:

“I….report that 50 cents per months is allowed for rent of
prison for each prisoner in all the States and Territories uniformly.”

What this means is that the U.S. Treasury would pay 50 cents
to the state for keeping a federal prisoner. 
That is 50 cents per month, or about 1.7 cents per day. And that was
also for rent of the cell, exclusive of all else, each state furnishing the
government with the added cost, separately.

Evidently the only state in the country that prescribed an
exact amount for keeping a federal prisoner in a state institution was
Maryland, “which received 30 cents per day for all expenses, rent, board, medical attendance, clothing, bedding,
fuel, and etc” (italics in the original). 
The rest of the states and territories had diverging and different
expenses, from the southern district of New York at 25 cents a day for board,
and ranging up to about 50 cents per day in  Michigan. Vermont charged an extra 60 dollars a year, in addition to the 6 bucks that they would
get for the rent of a Vermont
cell, to keep a prisoner—all expenses included—for one year, or about 18 cents
per day, total. 

Unfortunately I don’t have the stats of how many federal
prisoner there were in 1859, so I don’t know how much of a percentage of the
budget was occupied by prison expenses. 
But what I do know is that even with tossing around the CPI with
multiplier effects and so on the figures translate in no way to keeping a
person in prison today.   The cost of
housing someone in prison per year is around $35,000 a year, or $100 or so a
day.  Adjusting the 1860 dollar via CPI
for 2009 makes that dollar worth about 25 dollars today, which would be a
doubling and a doubling again of keeping someone in prison. 

I’m not so sure that those figures tell us much about what
we pay, today. 

Next, I was having a breeze through The Prison System of the United States by S.J. Barrows
(Commissioner of Prisons for the U.S.) which was published in Washington  in 1900.  One particularly interesting
section was the publication’s solitary statistical table, “Appendix A”, which
detailed the crimes of the 625 men incarcerated in the state of Michigan  in 1900.  Well over half of all those in prison were
there for larceny and burglary, while about 12% were in the big house for
violent crimes.  (Evidently 95% of this
number were literate and 70% could “cipher” (that is, produce basic arithmetical
skills)).  The total crime list (such as
it was) includes the following:

Capital crimes (murder in the first and second degree) and
manslaughter, along with murderous assault comprised about 1% of the total
prison population.  Other violent crimes
included assault with intent to do great bodily harm, rape, attempted rape,
rape and assault composed another 3%. Further assaults were classified under
(a) with intent to do great harm;  and
then as assault on a female under 14 years; and on a female under 16 years  There were also the sexual assaults:  taking indecent liberties with female; with
male child;  unlawful and carnal
knowledge of a young child;   inducing female to enter house of ill fame.  These last two categories included about 5%
of the prisoners.  Set aside form these
were the crimes of adultery, abduction, incest and sodomy, which included
another 3%.  So it seems that the violent
offenders in prison in  Michigan 
in 1900 totaled out at 12% or so. 

Burglary and larceny were the  largest categories, being subdivided into (a)
burglary accompanied by actual assault; (b) larceny; (c) larceny from a
dwelling;  (d) larceny from a shop in daytime; (e) attempting larceny from
the person; (f) entering a church in daytime to steal; (g) breaking and
entering a store in daytime;   (h) breaking and entering a store in
nighttime;(I)  breaking and entering a
dwelling in daytime; (j)  breaking and
entering a dwelling;  (k) breaking and
entering a railroad car.

Then there were a few largely vacant offenses:  Resisting an officer; Uttering and publishing
a forged note, breaking out of prison, perjury, arson, false pretense, and
malicious destruction of personal property, all combing for less than 2% of the
jailed population.

The vast majority of prisoners in Michigan were imprisoned for non-violent
crimes.  The federal fathers, in the
meantime, recognized that people in prison shouldn’t be idle while paying their
debts to society, and should fill their time with work that would occupy the
prisoner and bring some income into the prison system:

“The moment we apply to the convict a
different system of economics because he is in prison we go astray. When we
subject to analysis the plans proposed for abolishing the competition of
convict labor we find them based on false principles or expecting results not
to be realized. The wiser way for the peace of society and the interest of the
State is to place prison industries on the same ground as free industries, and
defend that. It is also said in opposition to the contract system that
contractors do not pay as much for the labor of convicts as free laborers
command.”

In 2005 the federal offenses for which people are incarcerated include: Drug
Offenses 59.6%; Robbery 9.8%;  Property
Offenses 5.5%;  Extortion, Fraud, Bribery
6.8% ; Violent Offenses 2.7% ; Firearms, Explosives, Arson 8.6% ; White Collar
1.0%; Immigration 2.8%;  Courts or
Corrections 0.8%;  National Security
0.1%;  Continuing Criminal Enterprise
0.8%;  Miscellaneous 1.5% .  54% of prisoner in state custody for the same
time were incarcerated for violent crimes, with drug offenses coming in at 20%
and property crimes at 19%.  The racial
breakdown of prisoners in the U.S. is another tragedy: of the prison population
in toto of 2.3 million in 2008 there
were 4,777 black male inmates per 100,000 black males held in state and federal
prisons and local jails, compared to 1,760 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000
Hispanic males and 727 white male inmates per 100,000 white males—that means
that the black incarceration rate was double and then double and then
half-doubled again that of whites.  What
this also means is that there were more blacks in jail cells than in college
dorm rooms in 2008.

I’m not sure that any amount of creative statistical mathemartistry could bring these figures to life for some sort of practical application in 2009, the present situation in the prisons being so immense and pervasive.  Numbers and assorted data from the past usually have the capacity to help us see where we are today; as I said earlier, I think that these fossils are simply that:  dead.

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This is really very good:  on distinguishing the free press with what it is and what it isn’t. The art icle appeared a few months before the official declaration of war between the U.S. and the U.K. (June 1812) in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register. It was written by William Cobbett (1763-1835) and I think that this was a direct and very vocal reaction to the government’s instituting a tax on newspapers such as this–adding a tax made the journal not affordable to but a select class, thereby limiting circulation and being a de facto censor for the distribution of information. 

He was also writing this from prison.  Cobbett was sentenced to a two years’ term in famous/infamous Newgate, sent their for treasonous libel after having written an anti-flogging article. He was also by that point a pain in the side of the government, and was paying for other perceived transgressions as well.

Evidence of the ‘crime”–the limiting tax stamp:

And the article:

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

This warning to the public appeared four months after Germany began to bomb the U.K. from the air using lighter-than-air airships. There’s also a section for identifying heavier aircraft, but bombing by that means didn’t start evidently until 1916. 

[Source:  Technical World Magazine, May 1915, page 336.]

“Zeppelins
(airships) performed about 51 strategic bombing raids during World War
I. These raids caused numerous civilian casualties, killing 557 and
injuring another 1,358 people. More than 5,000 bombs were dropped on
towns across Britain, causing £1.5 million in damage. 84 airships took
part, of these 30 were lost, either shot down by enemy action or lost in
accident. The raids, though disconcerting to civilian morale, were militarily ineffective.”–Wiki

Bombing from Zeppelins was very problematic–in the beginning of the bombing raids, mostly throughout 1915, the Zeppelins were able to fly beyond the reach of anti-aircraft weapons, and at certain altitudes just beyond this reach they could carry a relatively heavy load of bombs.  The drawback was that bombing from this height was extremely haphazard, with little accuracy, which meant that most of the targets wound up being civilian areas, creating the term “baby killers” for the Zeppelins.  In the next year when British defenses against the machines improved, the Zeppelins flew higher, which necessitated oxygen and a lighter payload, and more inaccuracy.  Towards the middle/end of the war German command went more with bombing Britain from aircraft (like the Gotha) more so than Zeppelins.  The end result was not very militarily effective, causing 2,000 mostly-civilian casualties. I’m not so sure about the use of the word “strategic” in the Wiki description.

Let’s remember the city of Hull, which received eight attacks during the Great War, only a prelude to the massive attacks it would receive during WWII. 

Hull Blitz Map, WWII, here