ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the evolution and structure of the Milestones Project. It presents some historical and modern approaches to one self-referential question: how can data visualization be applied to its own history? The chapter introduces another self-referential topic which entails the use of statistical and graphical methods for the analysis and understanding of historical innovations, developments, and trends. An early overview of the content and aims of the Milestones Project appeared in Michael Friendly's "Milestones in the history of data visualization." The initial step in portraying the history of data visualization was to create a simple chronological listing of milestone items with capsule descriptions; bibliographic references; markers for date, person, and place; and links to portraits, images, related sources, and more detailed commentaries. The Milestones Project website provides an initial page showing an interactive timeline of the events in this history as a visual overview.
