Gapminder

This website provides a wealth of information about international development. So of course do others, but this uses Trendalyzer software to allow the user to visualize the information.

For example, check out Gapminder World, 2006. Animating graphs allow one to see how the the distribution of countries have varied across two dimensions (such as life expectancy and per capita GDP) over several decades. Colors are used to indicate geographic location, and size of the data point to indicate population. Thus one display, over a few seconds provides the viewer with an amazing amount of insight into the development of the world in the latter part of the 20th century. The user can easily change the variable assigned to either the x or the y axis, or both. Thus a few minutes devoted to the site can provide a wealth of insight.

The Gapminder website provides many presentations, so that one can go on and on. "Stop! Look! Now look again!" -- the streaming video of Hans Rosling speaking at TED 2007, Monterey, California, provides both an amazing amount of information on development and an introduction to Gapminder online materials.

There are other goodies on the site, including publications and links.

Comment: This blog has focused on knowledge for development, but Gapminder reminds me how important understanding can be. It is one thing to have the facts, but quite another to develop an intuitive understanding of what has happened. Gapminder uses ICT to display information in such a way as to improve that intuitive understanding. It is a very nice site! JAD