Who was Florence Nightingale?

0:47 Welcome to Matters Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Before we start today, a big hello to six-year-old dirt bike racer Lily in Kelowna, British Columbia.

1:00 Whoa, racing a dirt bike sounds so fast. You have to be able to see the whole track in a split second.

1:07 Exactly. And if you haven't already, tap follow wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Hey Finn, speaking of seeing things in a split second like Lily does, what would you do if I handed you a massive book filled with 10,000 numbers and told you to find the secret hiding inside them?

1:25 I would probably just stare at it. A giant list of numbers just looks like a blurry grey wall to me.

1:32 Most people feel exactly the same way. When numbers are stacked in endless lists, they hide their secrets.

1:38 But math is all about numbers. How do you get the secret out if you can't even read the list?

1:44 You do something magical. You turn that big, boring list of numbers into a picture that your eyes can understand in a single look. Wait, you can turn numbers into a picture? You absolutely can. And today we are going to look at a picture that was so powerful it actually changed hospitals forever.

2:02 Okay, I am hooked. What kind of picture turns numbers into something you can see?

2:07 It has a simple, everyday name. It is called a chart. A chart uses sizes or shapes to show what the facts and numbers mean.

2:17 A chart. Like a weather chart or a chart showing sport scores.

2:21 Exactly. Today charts show us everything from the weather to how fast plants grow. But we are going back to the year 1854 to see one of the most brilliant charts ever drawn. 1854? Where are we going? To an army hospital in a place called Scutari, which is in what we now call Istanbul. A woman named Florence Nightingale had just arrived there.

2:47 I know that name. Florence Nightingale. She was a famous nurse, right?

2:51 She was. Florence went to Scutari to care for British soldiers. But when she got there, she found something terrible. What was it? The hospital was unbelievably crowded, and it was very, very dirty. The soldiers there became very ill, and many did not get better.

3:11 That does not sound like a place you go to get well.

3:14 It wasn't. But Florence was deeply curious, and she started doing something unusual. She kept perfectly careful records of everything. She counted every illness, every patient, every single day.

3:29 So she was making lists of numbers while she was taking care of people?

3:34 Yes, and her numbers showed a shocking secret. The numbers proved that far more soldiers were falling ill from the dirty, crowded hospital itself than were ever being hurt in battle. Wait, really? The dirt was actually the bigger problem. Exactly. Florence knew she had to fix this. So she took her giant lists of numbers and tried to show them to the important officials back in London to get them to clean up the hospitals.

4:04 Did they listen? I mean, she had the proof right there. They were very busy officials. They would not read pages and pages of tables filled with tiny numbers. The numbers just looked like a blurry wall to them. But she had the truth right there.

4:21 How do you make someone see the truth if they refuse to read the numbers?

4:25 That is the exact puzzle Florence had to solve. Fast forward to London in 1858. She was working with a man named William Farr, who helped her organise all those statistics. Statistics?

4:40 That's a cool word for collecting and studying big piles of numbers, right? You've got it.

4:46 So, to make those busy officials see the truth, Florence decided to give the numbers a real shape. She drew a chart! She drew a very special chart. Its real mathematical name is a polar area diagram.

5:01 A polar area diagram? That sounds very serious.

5:05 It does, but wait until you hear what it looked like. Florence drew a round chart shaped beautifully, just like a flower. A flower made of math? Yes. Picture a circle. Florence split the circle into twelve slices, one slice for each month of the year. So it looked like a flower with twelve petals.

5:28 Okay, I am picturing a twelve-petaled flower. But how do the petals show the numbers?

5:34 Here is the brilliant part. The area, or the space the petal takes up, showed how many people did not get better that month. If it was a small number, the area was tiny. If it was a huge number, the petal covered a vast area.

5:52 Oh, so instead of reading a huge number, you just suddenly see this giant, scary-looking petal taking up so much space on the page.

6:00 Exactly! And she coloured them by cores. The blue petals showed illnesses from the dirty hospital. The red petals showed things from battles.

6:10 So when you look at it in a single glance, you see this massive wave of blue petals sweeping across the chart.

6:17 Yes! Nobody had to read pages of numbers anymore. They could just look at the flower chart and instantly feel how big the problem was.

6:26 Did it work? Did the busy officials finally see what she meant?

6:31 It worked perfectly! People could see the problem at once. A sanitary commission from March 1855 helped clean things up, and the hospitals became so much safer.

6:43 Phew! That is amazing. She turned a blurry wall of boring numbers into a picture that actually saved people. She did.

6:52 In her later years, Florence lived with an illness and often had to stay resting in her room. But she never stopped writing and using her statistics to change the world.

7:03 I guess every time I look at a weather chart or a map of sports scores, I'm looking at a cousin of Florence Nightingale's flower. That's exactly right.

7:12 A polar area diagram, or really any chart, takes a huge invisible truth and gives it a shape you can hold in your mind.

7:20 I am definitely never going to look at a list of numbers the same way again. They are just waiting to be drawn.

7:27 Alright, Finn, it's quiz time! Let's see how closely everyone was listening.

7:32 I'm ready. Bring on the questions.

7:35 First question. In what year did Florence Nightingale travel to the hospital at Scutari? Next one. What is the real mathematical name of her famous round picture? Question three. Who was the statistician that helped her with the numbers in London? Here's number four. In her flower chart, what did each of the twelve petals stand for?

8:13 Last question. What did the area of each petal show? Great job! Let's go through the answers together. The first answer is, she travelled to Scutari in 1854. For question two, her picture is called a polar area diagram. The answer to number three is William Farr helped her with the statistics. For question four, each of the twelve petals stood for one month of the year.

8:51 And the final answer is the area of the petal showed the size of the problem, or how many people did not get better that month.

9:00 You know, I just love that she didn't give up when people wouldn't read her numbers. She beautifully used and popularized this type of chart, which was invented earlier by others so they could see the truth.

9:12 That is the real magic of mathematics, Finn. It isn't just counting things, it is making the invisible visible.

9:20 If you loved learning about Florence Nightingale's amazing flower chart as much as we did, we would love a five-star review. Just scroll down and tap the stars.

9:30 Yes, please hit follow on the show so you never miss an adventure. Oh, and we have sister shows too. History, science and philosophy is not boring. Go give those a listen and a follow as well.

9:43 And if you want a shout out on the show like Lily got today, or just want to say hi, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com.

9:52 We love hearing from you. See you next time on Maths Is Not Boring. Bye, everyone!