Follow the World Cup in Gapminder

32 countries qualified to the Football World Cup in South Africa. In Gapminder World Cup you can see how they score on some football- as well as development indicators.

Statistics isn’t everything
Brazil is the highest ranked team in the world according to FIFA:s ranking. They have 26 times as many registered football players in the country as North Korea, the lowest ranked team in the World Cup. In spite of that, North Korea managed to score a goal and Brazil only won by 2-1. See this in Gapminder World Cup.

Who will qualify to the second round?
Europe got a bit of a bad start while the Americas were quite successful. Halfway through the qualifying round, the map looks like this:

Blue countries are first or second place in the group (in the qualifying position) and red means no qualification halfway into the qualifying leg. Follow the development here.

Angus Maddison has passed away

On 24 April 2010, professor Angus Maddison passed away at the age of 83. Maddison was an economist and economic historian and a pioneer in exploring the broad developments of the world through statistics.

His data has been a foundation for the work of Gapminder in several areas. In our work to construct longer time series for indicators such as GDP and income data for all countries of the world, Maddison’s groundbreaking work has been completely invaluable.

He will be missed.

Gapminder Desktop launched

Now you can use Gapminder World – with all its indicators – from your own computer, even when you have no Internet. Just download and install the new Gapminder Desktop.

A downloadable version of Gapminder World is the single most requested tool, and we are very happy to be able to now offer just that, free of charge.

Click here to downloadClick here to download Gapminder Desktop

Gapminder Desktop is particularly useful for presentations as it allows you to prepare your graphs in advance and you won’t need an Internet connection at your lecture or presentation.

In the “list of graphs” you will get at preset list of graphs on the left side, but you can also very easily create your own favorite examples. Simply arrange the graph the way you want it and click “bookmark this graph”. Your example will the appear in your own list of favorite graphs. Perfect when you want to prepare a lecture or presentation.

Click here to download Gapminder Desktop

Free data from the World Bank

Yesterday (April 20, 2010) the World Bank reveiled that it will offer free access to a huge amount of development statistics. This bold and longly awaited step to liberate the data gives students, researchers, designers, journalists and organizations access to important statistics.

At the same time the World Bank launches a brand new web site: data.worldbank.org that will make it easier to find and use the statistics you want.

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick presented the new policy in a video where he also announced that the World Bank soon will launch an “apps for development competition”, challenging the developers community to develop the best tools for better understanding of development statistics.

Free access to public data is something that Hans Rosling, director of Gapminder, has been advocating for years. The World Bank’s webpage quotes him saying: “It’s the right thing to do, because it will foster innovation. That is the most important thing.”

Google launches Data Explorer

Google Public Data Explorer, a new powerful visualization tool that lets you explore, visualize and share data in a “Gapminder-like” manner, was launched by Google earlier this week.

Population without access to improved water source

The new tool lets you explore data from a number of data providers such as World Bank, EuroStat, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisitics and U.S. Census Bureau through “Bubble-charts”, maps, bar- or line charts, that you can share on your blog, web page or other media.

Three years ago, Google acquired Trendalyzer – the technology behind Gapminder World – from Gapminder. Since then, they have launched Motion Chart (a gadget that lets you make charts from you own data) and a public data search function that make it easier to find public data in a normal google search.

The new Public Data Explorer is still a Google Labs-project, which means that it is till work in progress. We hope that more data providers will make their data available through this technology to increase the use of data in the general discussion about the world.

More examples of what you can do:

Unemployment (total and in per cent) in the US

Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the U.S.

A brand new Gapminder.org

As you can see, Gapminder’s web site has got a facelift, but also some helpful new features. Here are the most important new features that will help you explore the world with Gapminder.
News in Gapminder.org

New and improved Gapminder World
Most new features can be found in Gapminder World, the on-line graph that displays the development for for over 200 countries and territories for a large number of indicators.

We have made it much easier to find interesting stories in the vast amount of data. Simply click the “Open graphs menu” button to browse through the list of stories that we found interesting and together with the graph get a short explanation of what the graph is showing.

The list of stories will grow over time and please, feel free to suggest new graphs or comparisons from the data, that you think should be in that list.

You can of course still make your own graph by choosing yourself among the 430 indicators and share that graph with the world, as before.

We also made it a lot easier to share your graph through your blog, web page or e-mail as well as finding the documentation to the statistics we use in Gapminder World.

New Data page makes download of statistics easy
The new Data page lists all the indicators, allowing you to search and download data to excel by just a click of a button. You also have the option to simply view it online or see it in a Gapminder graph.

The data page also contains information about the countries and territories you can see in Gapminder  World and full documentation for the time series that have been compiled by Gapminder, from various sources.

Especially for teachers
To assist teachers and educators in using Gapminder in their education, we have opened a new For Teachers page especially for this group. During the spring we will add tools, resources and examples that we think could be useful in education.


New bubble graph: Gapminder Agriculture

cow_shadowWhich country has the largest grain production? Who produces the most fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee beans or other crops? And who brings up the most sheeps, cows, or other livestock?

Now you can see agricultural production in a completely new Gapminder Graph. With data from FAO, we have collected over 700 indicators to show how agricultural production has changed over the last 45 years.

Here are a few examples:

Congo's income adjusted upwards in Gapminder World

Income per person for Democratic Republic of Congo has been revised. We have made an upward adjustment of the income for 2005 with 25%. We have also adjusted the growth rate from 1991 and on. Congo is still the poorest country in the world. The background and details of this adjustment  are documented in our documentation, (p. 23-25).

Children per women since 1800 in Gapminder World

The data for “Children per woman (total fertility)” has been updated to cover 195 countries from 1800-2008. It is now possible to see the entire “demographic transition” that most countries have followed: going from many children and short lives, too few children and long lives.

» Click here to see children per woman vs life expectancy in Gapminder World

Continue reading “Children per women since 1800 in Gapminder World”

TV-documentary on Hans Rosling now with subtitles

In the next 30 days you can see the Swedish TV-documentary: Rosling’s World: The best statistics you’ve ever seen, with English subtitles, on the webpage of the Swedish Television. The documentary will be aired again on Swedish Television (SVT24) on Tuesday 18 August, 20.00 in Sweden (19.00 CET) and in conjunction with that the video will be posted on SVT’s site for 30 days, this time also with English subtitles.

Continue reading “TV-documentary on Hans Rosling now with subtitles”

High income – rare in tropical land-locked countries

The role of geography for the prospects of development has been hotly debated the last decade. Economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, have suggested that a country that are situated in the tropics or that are landlocked face a much larger challenge in development, for a number of reasons.
Continue reading “High income – rare in tropical land-locked countries”

New Google feature: “public data search”

Google has just launched a new search feature that makes it possible to search and compare public data in an interactive graph. In this first version, data for unemployment, for all US states and districts, are available and the results are very interesting:
Click this link to see and investigate US unemployment rate

Also read Google’s official announcement:
Google Blog: Adding search power to public data

Hans Rosling documentary on Swedish Television

“Roslings värld”, a new television documentary about Hans Rosling produced by the Swedish Television (SVT), will soon air in Sweden. In this portait by the Swedish journalist Pär Fjällström the viewers get to follow Hans Rosling during a few weeks in the end of 2008.

Continue reading “Hans Rosling documentary on Swedish Television”

Hans Rosling debunks myths in new lecture-series

<br />Can the population growth be stopped? Is Brazil, Egypt and Bangladesh now improving faster than Sweden ever did? And can everyone live on the same level as the rich countries?

In a new lecture series, filmed in a studio at the Swedish Television, Hans Rosling answer yes to all questions above.

The lecture has been divided into three videos that you can find in the video-section.

Part 1 – What stops population Growth?
Part 2 – Poor beat rich in MDG race
Part 3 – Yes they can!