Revisiting Historical Bar Graphics on Epidemics in the Era of R ggplot2

Abstract

This study is motivated by an article published in a local history magazine on “Pandemics in the History”. That article was also motivated by a government report involving several statistical graphics which were drawn by hand in 1938 and used to summarize official statistics on epidemics occurred between the years 1923 and 1937. Due to the aesthetic information design available on these historical graphs, in this study, we would like to investigate how graphical elements of the graphs such as titles, axis lines, axis tick marks, tick mark labels, colors, and data values are presented on these graphics and how to reproduce these historical graphics via well-known data visualization package ggplot2 in our era