The use of graphs to display information became a common occurrence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Newspapers, magazines, science journals, financial reports, political surveys, and, of course, the sports page, all routinely contain tables, charts, and graphs to summarize and explain current events, scientific studies, or statistical data. It was actually Florence Nightingale who became one of the first innovators in the tabulation and graphical display of descriptive statistics in her attempts to reform hospital sanitation methods. But to most people, graphs and graphing still belong primarily to the domain of high school algebra and other fields of mathematics.

One of the first graphical representations of a function occurred around the middle of the 14th century. At that time Nicole d'Oresme gave a geometrical verification of a theorem, discovered at Merton College of Oxford and hence known as the Merton rule, concerning the...