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Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

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Re: Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

#4

Post by hentrep »

dangoldin wrote: post #3

Tufte wrote a ton about this map for those interested: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard

What is the y-axis supposed to represent in the graph? Not to nitpick, but a y-axis title would be helpful.

EDIT: I assume it represents Napoleon's army. If so, that spike in December is interesting, and presumably represents reinforcements?

Re: Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

#6

Post by PhasmaFelis »

hentrep wrote: post #4
dangoldin wrote: post #3

Tufte wrote a ton about this map for those interested: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard

What is the y-axis supposed to represent in the graph? Not to nitpick, but a y-axis title would be helpful. EDIT: I assume it represents Napoleon's army. If so, that spike in December is interesting, and presumably represents reinforcements?

You can mouse over a point on either the map or the graph to highlight the corresponding point on the other. Based on that, the spike in late November appears to represent the main army rejoining a group that split off during the outbound march.

Re: Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

#7

Post by gry »

Charles Minard [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard] contributed amazing work to several fields, information graphics most notably.

  Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. 
  The graphic is notable for its representation in two dimensions of six types of 
  data: the number of Napoleon's troops; distance; temperature; the latitude 
  and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates.
Fantastic work. Thank you. It's great to see in-situ.

Re: Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

#9

Post by boombip »

avodonosov wrote: post #8

What do these rectangles mean? There are lot of different looking maps of this war in Internet, a random one: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/6214/33778531.0/0_733c6_77420...

The rectangles represent the number of men on Napoleon's Grand Army during his march on, and subsequent retreat from, Moscow.

Re: Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia

#10

Post by SuperChihuahua »

hentrep wrote: post #4
dangoldin wrote: post #3

Tufte wrote a ton about this map for those interested: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard

What is the y-axis supposed to represent in the graph? Not to nitpick, but a y-axis title would be helpful. EDIT: I assume it represents Napoleon's army. If so, that spike in December is interesting, and presumably represents reinforcements?

As you can see in this graph, Napoleon split up his army and left a small part behind while he walked towards Moscow. It's the remainings from this smaller army that represents this spike
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