How diagrams can promote scientific thinking

Florence Nightingale was the first to use a pie chart to represent data.

A picture, the old adage goes, is worth 1,000 words. But in science a diagram can describe things that transcend the written word. A single image can convey the simple underlying pattern hidden by words or equations.

This article describes several examples of how diagrams helped promote scientific thinking: BBC News - Diagrams that changed the world