science

IZOSTAT

IZOSTAT is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand IZOSTAT rather than just read about it. In short: IZOSTAT was an agency of the Soviet government that designed, created, published, and distributed graphic representations of Soviet industry that were easily understandable without written explanations. Founded as an educational unit, Izostat evolved into a producer of propaganda.

Key takeaways

IZOSTAT belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect IZOSTAT to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of IZOSTAT from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

IZOSTAT was an agency of the Soviet government that designed, created, published, and distributed graphic representations of Soviet industry that were easily understandable without written explanations. Founded as an educational unit, Izostat evolved into a producer of propaganda. It operated between 1931 and 1940.

Origins in Vienna In Red Vienna of the 1920s under the Social Democratic Party of Austria, philosopher and logician of the Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath, founded a new museum for housing and city planning called Siedlungsmuseum, renamed in 1925 the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna). To make the museum's displays widely understandable for visitors from all around the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, Neurath worked on graphic design and visual education, believing that "Words divide, pictures unite," a coinage of his own that he displayed on the wall of his office there. In the late 1920s, his assistant, graphic designer and communications theorist Rudolf Modley, contributed to a new means of communication: a visual "language." With the illustrator Gerd Arntz and with Marie Reidemeister, Neurath's team developed novel ways of representing quantitative information via easily interpretable icons. The forerunner of contemporary Infographics, he initially called this the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics. As his ambitions for the project expanded beyond social and economic data related to Vienna, he renamed the project "Isotype," an acronymic nickname for the project's full title: International System of Typographic Picture Education. At international conventions of city planners, Neurath presented and promoted his communication tools. Neurath's methods made such an impact on a delegation from the Soviet Embassy, another government with a polyglot population, the Soviet government in Moscow invited Neurath and Reidemeister to assist with the creation of an educational institution based on the same principles.

Establishment Neurath and Reidemeister accepted the invitation, and Neurath committed to spending sixty days each year in the Soviet Union to assist started in 1931. The institute was located in 9 Bol'shoi Komsomol'sky pereulok. Neurath's colleagues Gerd Arntz and Peter Alma also spent time working at IZOSTAT between 1931 and 1934. In 1932 Izostat published a monograph about its methods in Pictorial statistics and the Vienna Method (Изобразительная статистика и венский метод) by Ivan Petrovich Ivanitsky.

Output With a staff that eventually grew to seventy, Izostat's main goal was to develop infographics that communicated both the successes of the First five-year plan (1928–1932), especially in the development of coal, iron, steel, and electricity, and predictions of the anticipated successes of the Second five-year plan in roads, railways, and waterways. Izostat’s output was not limited to news, but created a wide variety of materials including charts, books, window displays, and materials for Soviet holidays and celebrations. Some Izostat materials were also produced for an overseas audience. English-language publications such as The Struggle for Five Years in Four and The Second Five-Year Plan in Construction were printed and distributed to Communist Party or trade union officials in the anglophone world. Survey Graphic, an American journal reproduced a number of Izostat charts originally created for Izvestia. The agency’s most notable English-language project was an album produced for the 1939 New York World's Fair and overseen by the Russian avant-garde suprematist artist El Lissitzky. Titled USSR: An Album Illustrating the State Organization and National Economy of the USSR, it combined Izostat charts, photographs of notable Soviet figures and events, and woodcut socialist realist scenes portraying Soviet life in a positive light. As Neurath perceived Izostat's mission stray from education, he grew disillusioned with Izostat and ended his collaboration in 1934. By the late 1930s, the agency's mission had shifted to propaganda and agitation.

Dissolution The organization continued to operate until 1940, when it was shut down.

Notes

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with IZOSTAT

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what IZOSTAT claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to IZOSTAT before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about IZOSTAT ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of IZOSTAT

In research: IZOSTAT appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses IZOSTAT in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: IZOSTAT is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Infographics, Soviet state institutions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for IZOSTAT outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study IZOSTAT in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what IZOSTAT means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain IZOSTAT out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is IZOSTAT in simple terms?

Why does IZOSTAT matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study IZOSTAT?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on IZOSTAT.