Gapminder shows statistics in motion. Doesn’t sound too exciting? Take a look at this amazing tool and see if you don’t agree. Ok, I’m a data geek – but this will help you find your own inner data geek, I promise.
This chart shows declining birth rate associated with increases in personal income for the US, UK, China & India. What story can you tell about what’s happening here?
Just think how this could be used in school to bring “boring” old data to life. This service has been around for a few years, but I just learned about it thanks to Buffy Hamilton’s post: Storytelling with Data: Statistics Tell a Story.
Gapminder includes over 200 social and economic indicators that you can use to create amazing data representations. Countries of the world are represented by bubbles on the charts. Regions of the world are shown by color and bubble size shows relative population size.
And take a look at this stellar presentation by one of the founders of Gapminder, Hans Rosling as he makes data not only compelling, but entertaining!
About 10 years ago I worked on a project called “Numbers Tell the Story” that helped libraries create compelling stories about their libraries that were supported by data. Part of the technology piece of the project was learning to use Excel & Powerpoint to transform data into visually interesting charts and images rather than boring tables of data. I’m just imagining what a Gapminder like tool could have done for that project.
