Thursday, July 26, 2007

Development Dots in Motion

As we recall from "Sesame Street," it can be very amusing to watch dots move around. Check out Gapminder, which describes itself as "a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development." The "Gapminder World" is a nifty tool that allows you to plot various development indicators (life expectancy, fertility, per capita income) for the countries of the world. Each country's data is represented as a dot proportional to its size, and - this is the cool part - you can set the graph in motion to see how things have progressed (or not progressed) over time. For a dramatic illustration of the AIDS epidemic, choose life expectancy as one of the variables, and follow Botswana's dot.

No comments: