Unclear provenance of crimea.json dataset ('Nightingale's Rose')

[dsmedia]

The information carried by Florence Nightingale's Rose Diagram isn't just a dataset - it's a pivotal moment in the history of data visualization and public health. Given the historical nature of this dataset, it's important that we represent it well. I've noticed some discrepancies that I believe we should address:

Current Situation

1. Our dataset doesn't seem to match Nightingale's original published data. Nor does it match a Protovis example by Mike Bostock. This makes it challenging to update SOURCES.md.
2. Bostock's visualization methods to reproduce the chart have been critiqued as not accurately reflecting Nightingale's original technique. This creates an opportunity to properly construct an example using vega or vega-lite.

Details

The dataset in crimea.json appears to be derived from or inspired by a famous polar area diagram from Florence Nightingale's "A contribution to the sanitary history of the British army during the late war with Russia", which was later featured in this Protovis example by Mike Bostock.

As noted by @kgryte:

Bostock's implementation, while visually similar to Nightingale's visualization, is wrong. First, the data is not correct. You can verify this in Nightingale's original work. Second, Bostock directly maps the wedge radius to deaths. This mistake is common. Instead, Nightingale represents deaths in terms of area, thus requiring the radius for each wedge to be calculated (for more information, see Understanding Uncertainty's The Mathematics of Coxcombs). This discrepancy would be apparent if one displayed polar axes and allowed reading of radial values.

The crimea.json hosted here does not match either Bostock's dataset or the Nightingale table that appears to sit behind her original polar area diagram.

Questions

1. Can we trace the exact provenance of our current crimea.json dataset?
2. Does crimea.json generate a similarly shaped diagram as the Bostock version? Perhaps it was just constructed to create a similar effect?
3. Should a Vega or Vega Lite example be created that addresses @kryte's critique?
4. Should a provisional description be added to the README.md file that notes this apparent discrepancy, or should we wait until this is resolved?
5. Should crimea.json eventually be modified to capture the actual data referenced in the original Nightingale source, for the sake of accuracy? It seems possible that at the time this dataset was uploaded, the full text of the Nightingale paper was difficult to access, while today the full text including the dataset is easily retrieved online.

[domoritz]

@jheer @arvind do you have pointers here?

[arvind]

It looks like crimea.json dates back to the very first commit to vega-lite from @jheer :) So perhaps he knows?