So infographics are a way to present data in a visual way
and by doing so, hopefully to give us a better understanding of the data.
And what I've got to show you today is what's been called
the greatest infographic of all time.
Here it is, it was devised by a man called Charles Minard.
He was a French civil engineer.
He used to make infographics in his retirement.
And this describes Napolen's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.
Through this infographic, you see, at the beginning of 1812
Napoleon's empire was at its height.
He had, what, an army of size 422,000 men.
Now, you can see the size of this army
by the width of this line.
So here they are, they're in Kowno, it's in Lithuania.
They're here and they decide to attack Russia.
So they're going through Lithuania.
They're going through Belarus.
And they're going, moving onwards to Russia.
They're trying to encounter the Russian army,
but the Russian army, they keep falling back.
That pushes the French army forwards.
They keep being dragged forwards, then the Russian army fall back.
And they're being dragged forwards again.
As the Russian army fall back, they are burning villages down.
They are burning the crops to prevent the French army from living off the land.
So in that case the French have to live off the supplies they brought with them.
To supply this large army, it wasn't possible.
There was starvation, people were drinking out of puddles,
they were eating rotten food.
People were going off-camp at night trying to find food.
If they did, the Russians would find them, they would kill them.
So we can see how many men they're losing by the way this brown line
is getting thinner, and thinner, and thinner.
They're moving in to Russia, they're going up to here.
They finally catch up with the Russian army just outside of Moscow.
So now at this point they have only 127,000 men left.
And this is the location of a great battle.
A very bloody battle.
So, at this battle they lost 27,000 men here.
They started with 127,000 and then here, as they move on forward,
you can see they now have 100,000 men.
So we've got this step here that shows you that sudden decrease.
The Russian army, they retreat, they disappear.
And so Napoleon now can ride in to Moscow victorious.
So he rides in to Moscow, with his 100,000 men.
However, the Russians deny him his victory.
They refuse to concede, they evacuate the town.
The people who are left in Moscow are given orders to burn the place to the ground.
So here they are in Moscow, and they are forced to go back.
They've still got no supplies
They're still in their summer gear.
It's now winter.
Down here it tells you the temperature of that winter.
A very cold winter
It goes down to minus 21 degrees C.
And this is the black line showing them going back the way they came.
You can see the number of men who are dying when it
gets thinner and thinner at these points.
This is Charles Minard using the data that he got from historical documents.
He's representing that data, these drops in numbers,
using his black line here getting thinner and thinner.
There are more men who died through starvation and disease, desertion,
than died in all the battles combined.
Now by the time they get to this river,
they had a disasterous crossing.
They started with 50,000 men.
By the time they crossed this river, they only had, what is that?
28,000 men.
This not only does this tell us the temperature of that winter.
Not only does it tell us how many men they were losing as they marched across.
It also shows us other things, it shows us offshoots.
As troops of men have offshoots, they go off somewhere else
and then they rejoin.
So we can see here 60,000 men on the way to Moscow.
60,000 men break off, they stay 'round here, they have their own problems here.
33,000 men come back and join the retreating French army here.
They rejoin so now you can see that this line does increase in size.
Edward Tufte who's an expert in these infographics,
he described this infographic as six variables plotted,
including the size of the army, its location on a two dimensional surface,
the direction of the army's movement,
the temperature at various dates during the retreat from Moscow,
and it's perhaps the best statistical graphic ever drawn.
We're marching through Lithuania, Belarus.
We're through, marching into Russia.
We are encountering Russian armies, we're having a battle over here,
a sudden drop in the number of men.
We finally walk in to Moscow only to be disappointed.
We have to return, we have no supplies, we have to return.
We return back with this black line.
As we return, death, famine, disease
follows us as we return.
The men is decreasing and decreasing.
We are not prepared, we don't have what we need.
We do have a rejoin here of some men from, who have been waiting for us.
But even there we try and cross this river; disaster again:
a sudden drop in men.
Back the way we came, all the way to where we started in Lithuania.
At the end we have 10,000 men, where we started with 422,000 men.