Edu-Manga: Florence Nightingale

This new line of Edu-Manga* features Astro Boy, one of Japan's most popular icons among children, who journeys alongside the reader. He provides for kids not only a history lesson but also a richer understanding of the life lessons these historical figures share with us. Florence Nightingale is most remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods. For most of her ninety years, Nightingale pushed for reform of the British military health-care system, and with that, the profession of nursing started to gain the respect it deserved. Unknown to many, however, was her use of new techniques of statistical analysis, such as when, during the Crimean War, she plotted the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She developed the "polar-area diagram" to dramatize the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions and the need for reform. With her analysis, Florence Nightingale revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics. *Note: Edu-Manga is a term coined in Japan which means Educational Manga.