At the top of the list, Princeton University is the best university in the country, known for its physics, economics, and international relations departments. Notably, it’s a rare Ivy league university that does not have a law, medical, or business school.

We’ve previously featured that 1931 “History of the World!” histomap, an impressive condensing of 4000 years of human activity. The evolution graphic you see here, also from 1931 and “arranged” by John B. Sparks, is equally impressive, and speaks to the times in ways that DeMille’s Bible movies did as well. Bear in mind that the Scopes Monkey Trial had only concluded six years earlier, and the country—as it is again today—was hotly divided over the subject represented here. Nonetheless, Sparks and publisher Rand McNally gamely presented this “Story of the Emergence and Progression of Life” with confident precision and without apology. Sparks’ map, however, remains an interesting document because of its seeming disinteredness. While the focus on racialism and imperial conquest may seem to place Sparks in company with populist “scientific” racists of the period like Lothrop Stoddard (whom Tom Buchanan quotes in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby), it would also seem that his design has much in common with early Enlightenment figures whose conception of time was not necessarily linear. Following classical models, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes tended to divide historical epochs into rising and falling actions of various people groups, rather than the gradual ascent of one race over all others towards an end of history. For example, poet Abraham Cowley writes a compressed “universal history” in his 1656 poem “ To Mr. Hobbes,” moving from Aristotle (the “Stagirite”) to the poem’s subject Thomas Hobbes. The movement is progressive, yet the historical representatives of each civilization receive some equal weight and similar emphasis.The History of Philosophy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visualized in Two Massive, 44-Foot High Diagrams Aside from the numerous schools present within each university—which can often be the best for specific majors—factors like location, proximity to family, campus culture, the non-academic pursuits (sports, extracurriculars, internships) are also taken into consideration. The article is a fascinating look inside today’s Senate and especially the MAGAfied Republican Party. It also includes this passage about a map on Romney’s wall.

Financial resources: The average per student spend on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2021 fiscal year. Shortly after moving into his Senate office, Romney had hung a large rectangular map on the wall. First printed in 1931 by Rand McNally, the “histomap” attempted to chart the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful civilizations through 4,000 years of human history. When Romney first acquired the map, he saw it as a curiosity.

Ranked: Average Black Friday Discounts for Major Retailers

I use this when I'm growing frustrated with trying to make a text-heavy report look more engaging. I find I fall into visualisation traps when it comes to qualitative data, so having a range of options mapped onto different purposes like this is really helpful to start thinking about what would work. Why would you recommend it to other people? Finding the best university for prospective students is more than just perusing a long ranking list. The chart emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (a quasi-racial understanding of the nature of human groups, quite popular at the time) evolved throughout history. Furthermore, individual engagement at college (irrespective of the rank of the school in question) plays a far bigger role in learning and general well-being than simply attending a highly-ranked school. The period of Cowley recognized theories of racial, cultural, and natural supremacy, but such qualities, as in Sparks’ map, were the product of a long line of succession from equally powerful and noteworthy empires and groups to others, not a social evolution in which a superior race naturally arose. Rand McNally advertised the chart as presenting “the march of civilization, from the mud huts of the ancients thru the monarchistic glamour of the middle ages to the living panorama of life in present day America.” While the blurb is filled with pseudoscientific colonialist talking points, the chart itself has the dated, yet strikingly egalitarian arrangement of information that—like much of the illustration in National Geographic—sought to accommodate the best consensus models of the times, displaying, but not proselytizing, its biases.

It shows in a simple way what charts are appropriate for the story you want to tell with your data. Qualitative Chart Chooser 3.0 is an updated version of Stephanie Evergreen and Jennifer Lyons attempt to organise different ways to show qualitative data.

The latest ranking of America’s best universities is here, perfectly timed for the approaching admissions season. There are so many fun ways to utilize this visual for qualitative data. Take a stab at it and let us know how it goes. Happy visualizing! This tool maps out which charts are appropriate for telling various 'stories' with your qualitative data, such as whether you're trying to outline a hierarchy of concepts, the flow of events, a comparison between or a cluster of ideas or responses, or to highlight comments/words.