Sankey or Harness?
A debate about the appropriate name for a particular type of diagram
By G.D.
THE rise of data visualisation in the digital age has revived interest in a style of chart called a Sankey diagram. These were initially made famous by Charles Joseph Minard's statistical graphic of 1869, showing the dramatic decrease in number of Napoleon's troops as his army advanced on Moscow and then retreated, with the size of the army indicated by the width of the line.
This style of diagram makes it easy to see the dominant flows within a system and highlights where losses occur. The Sankey diagram is named after an Irish engineer, Matthew Sankey, who published a diagram in 1898 showing the energy flows in a steam engine:
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