About the Cover Illustration

 

The figure on the cover of Think Like a Data Scientist is captioned “A soldier of the Strelitz guards under arms,” or Soldat du corps des Strelits sous les armés. The Strelitz guards were part of the Muscovite army in Czarist Russia through the eighteenth century. The illustration is taken from Thomas Jefferys’ A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Ancient and Modern, published in London between 1757 and 1772. The title page states that these are hand-colored copperplate engravings, heightened with gum arabic. Thomas Jefferys (1719–1771) was called “Geographer to King George III.” He was an English cartographer who was the leading map supplier of his day. He engraved and printed maps for government and other official bodies and produced a wide range of commercial maps and atlases, especially of North America. His work as a mapmaker sparked an interest in local dress customs of the lands he surveyed and mapped; they are brilliantly displayed in this four-volume collection.