Ola Rosling presentation of Gapminder at Google Headquarters

Here's another excellent Gapminder presentation -- this time by Ola Rosling speaking at Google Headquarters back on March 7th, 2006. It runs approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.

After seeing several examples of Prof. Hans Rosling taking the Gapminder tool through its paces, it's worth watching to see how the same tool in a different person's hands can produce a different and yet completely worthwhile storyline to help explain the data and bring out new details that no one has ever seen or noticed before.

The talk includes some nice examples of why the log scale is important as well as several sections that make the case for why being able to disaggregate turns out to be so important for understanding.

Along with many others who have checked out Gapminder, I personally am looking forward to the time when a new version will be available - ideally with access to a ton more of built in data as well as the possibility to allow the loading of new data sets.

Having experimented with the Gapminder World 2006 version, it is clear the possibilities of this approach are going to make a huge contribution to analysis of trend data and the creation of powerful narratives that weave those findings together. Because of its interactive nature, I am also certain that this tool will also prove to be a spring board for collaboration, for merging the best findings and story lines from many different analysts, each bringing their own unique perspective to bear on the data.

I think it is also highly likely that the next generation of Gapminder will also prove to be a tool that non-expert ordinary citizens will be able to use themselves to make sense of the world and to allow them to personally sanity check and validate the story lines of "the experts."

Some additional Gapminder tools for download are available at the Gapminder.org web site.

You won't be disappointed if you give Gapminder World 2006 a trial run. One nice feature of the tool is that as you make adjustments to what you are seeing on the screen by clicking on various options, these changes are reflected in current URL link value. If you create a situation that you personally find interesting, when you publish the URL, others will be able to begin their look at Gapminder with the way you had last set up its parameter options.

For example, check out this link to a customized Gapminder result (I recommend you do this in a new Tab or in a new browser window) where 4 countries have been selected, trailing tails have been added, the X and Y axis have been changed to represent Urban Population (linear scale) and Life Expectancy (linear scale) . We have reduced the size of each circle and zoomed in on both the X and Y axis to just contain the tracks of the 4 selected countries. We also slowed down the speed at which the trends will progress and adjusted the opacity setting for the countries not selected to a dimmer value.

The beauty of this is that when we share such a link, the recipient can actually see the last thing that we saw - what we thought important enough to capture.

They can then take that as their starting point to checkout any combination of other options - adding or removing countries, adjusting the speed, removing tails, changing to log scale on the X or Y axis, adjusting the opacity of the non-selected countries, zooming back out to a one hundred percent view of the data, or selecting new performance indicators for the x and y axis.

We recommend starting a new broswer tab or window because each time you select a new option, it is as if you had linked to a new web page, so if you make many changes, you will have to hit the back button many times to get back to your original launch page. Of course, this is also a feature as it lets you go back to previous version of option settings very easily.

Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics

Jesse Robbins' excellent blog post - Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics - at O'Reilly Radar points us to another recent and Rosling video presentation - this time from the OECD World Forum in Istanbul. Unfortunately, the camera work is only a fraction as good as with the TED presentations and weather channel type presentation showing only Rosling speaking or showing a long view of the whole auditorium. In neither case is the exciting data that Rosling is talking about visible to the video viewer.

However, Rosling's message in this talk is still exactly on the money - a continued call
for more open and available data,
for better tools for visualizing it, and
for making it available to ordinary citizens around the world.

The chorus of voices echoing this message is rising. Web sites with visual tools such as Gapminder, Swivel and ManyEyes are leading the charge and changing the way we think about data.

Hans Rosling: GapCast #1 Health, Money & Sex in Sweden.

Here's the latest from Hans Rosling's blog. His use of weather channel type technology for this video leads to much more vivid looking demonstrations.

This permits much more interaction between Rosling and the data as it changes over time and permits both Rosling and the data to be visible at all times. Compare it with the video capture difficulties that show up even in the very professionally cone TED talks where the camera switches back and forth between Rosling and the screen and where Rosling is not brightly lighted for fear of washing out the projection screen.

With the weather channel technology approach, both Rosling and the data are brilliant and vivid.

Definitely worth a look.

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video)

Here's Hans Rosling's talk from TED 2007. Another home run from the man who brought you GapMinder.

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths

Don't miss this GapMinder talk by Hans Rosling at TED 2006.

20 minutes and well worth every minute you spend. GapMinder is a great interactive tool for looking and change over time. In the skilled hands of Professor Rosling, its richness and power come into full view. Don't miss it.

TED Talks Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen (video)

Iraq Trend Data Set now posted to Swivel and Many Eyes

A while back we mentioned the great new data sharing and visualization web site called Many Eyes and we pointed out an Iraq Trend data set we had uploaded so that others could more readily examine and analyze it.

We've recently come across another great new data sharing and visualization web site called Swivel and have uploaded the same data set there for comparison purposes at: http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/show/1004780.

Both Many Eyes and Swivel fall into a category I have started calling Trend Visualization Appliances. The amazing Gapminder work also fits into this category as do all the various stock market visualization tools currently available.

The old fashioned form of trend visualization appliances (e.g. a standard report including graphical output) can still be pretty useful when managed carefully. For further comparison, here is the link to a PDF report that graphically presents the same data - vizualizing-trends-ohanlon-testimony.pdf.

Similarly, for data sharing, the old fashioned URL links to csv files offer an alternative to the WEB 2.0 mechanisms such as Many Eyes and Swivel. Here's the Iraq trend data the old fashioned way: ohanlon-key-factors.csv

So many choices, so little time. How can we decide which is best for our purposes?

I'll be revisiting this topic, but for now, my own criteria for deciding which tools I will use at a given moment are:
1) ease of use,
2) shortness of learning curve, and
3) personal productivity and time saving -- the speed at which I can navigate through complex trend data sets to discover previously hidden patterns.

What do you think?

More Timelines in Motion

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Baghdad: Mapping the violence

This interactive graphic from the BBC will repay your careful interactive examination.

Some things to try.

1) Drag the timeline slider slowly to see how the level of violence has changed month to month.

2) Also click on Ethnic Areas and then click back and forth between Current and Pre-2006 to see the dramatic changes in ethnic mix that have taken place already and to understand where the predominance of violence is taking place.

It will be interesting to compare the March 2007 view of violence when it is ready to the pictures of violence in December 2006, January 2007 and February 2007 to better gauge the degree to which the "surge" may be having a positive effect.

This would be even better if, like Gapminder, there were a PLAY button and some Speed control. Next Month and Previous Month buttons would also be handy as it is a little tricky dragging the timeline control exactly one month forward or back or clicking on exactly a given hash mark along the timeline of months.

Hat tip to: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

And speaking of gapminder

Thanks to a hat tip from Pat McConnell, I've learned that the latest news is it that GOOGLE has acquired gapminder's Trendalyzer software. Here's the scoop from the the gapminder home page.

Make sense of the world by having fun with statistics

Gapminder and Google share an enthusiasm for technology that makes data easily accessible and understandable to the world. Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. We believe that Google’s acquisition of Trendalyzer will speed up the achievement of this noble goal. Trendalyzer’s developers have left Gapminder to join Google in Mountain View, where Google intends to improve and scale up Trendalyzer, and make it freely available to those who seek access to statistics.

The Stockholm-based Gapminder Foundation will continue to spearhead the use of new technology for data animations. The goal is to promote a fact-based worldview by bringing statistical story-telling to new levels. In collaboration with producers of accurate statistics that are eager to give the public free access to databases, Gapminder hopes to recruit and inspire many users of public statistics.

If you haven't seen Trendalyzer in action, you are in for a treat. You can check it out for yourself with this powerful example.

Trendalyzer in simple terms is a timeline in motion machine which has all sorts of potential to help us discover previously unseen patterns. Google's stated intentions to continue to advance on this already powerful design is an exciting development for anyone interested in understanding the behavior of important factors and how they change over time.

timelines in motion

A nice example of timelines in motion accompanied by an audio track from Brad Delong.

The combination of a timeline change in motion and a guided audio track is powerful.

To make this even better, I would have liked it to zip along at a faster pace and it would be great to have a higher resolution graphic quality so that the X and Y axes could be more readily examined and understood.

You won't be surprised to hear me saying that making the data available in a readily re-usable format would sweeten things even further.

Providing a mechanism similar to gapminder to be able to watch this change over time with the viewer in control of the speed would be even better.

What do you think?