Thanks for your comment, Klaus. It’s good to hear from someone who has experience in designing nomograms for publication. When I read on your site about the previous publication that arbitrarily moved one of the scales to make more room, it reminded me of similar horrors done to sundials that I’ve witnessed. Your comparison of the readability of a network chart to the equivalent nomogram shows the real power of nomograms. You mention empirical nomography, which I’ve realized rather late in the game is a very important part of the field, and linearization techniques to create nomograms from nonlinear data (such as the Lafay anamorphosis) are really intriguing–probably a topic for a future blog post.

Thanks again for the link to your site–it was really enjoyable to read. I also laughed at your Pocket Consultant gag gift at http://www.daube.ch/opinions/crafts01.html , but not too hard because I’ll be releasing software for a pocket-sized paper organizer very shortly now (and supplying a nomogram to calculate gas mileage on one of the custom pages!). — Ron

You’re quite welcome. I also visited your site (click on George’s name) on the history of computing at LLNL and found it very interesting and well-written. — Ron

Thanks, Liunian! — Ron