Gap-Minder - World Statistics

I was watching a TED presentation this evening on my computer and experienced a new 'view' of the world's AIDS epidemic, but shown graphically - with animated data. It was very enlightening!

The FULL data set, not just AIDS, but education, life expectancy, income, births per woman, and many many others are all available. But best of all there is an easy-to-use interface that allows one to pic the variables, and then watch how things in the world have changed over the last 200 years.

This is a *fantastic* tool to learn and understand differences in countries, cultures, and how we all fit in this world. It's amazing to see how the world has changed over time.

There is something about having the freedoms, liberty, captialism, etc. that has allowed this 'winning' way. The US is NOT the best at everything - this data from world statistics shows that. We have problems and issues - that's true - but I'm pretty glad to be an American anyway.

Please spend some time learning - and I mean that - LEARNING from the historical data and statistics at this site. It will be good for you to think about the 'whys' of some of these.

Here's the site.

A couple of places to start - AIDS -vs- Income, Number of Children per Woman -vs- Income, Life Expectancy over time, just to get you started.

Enjoy - and please share your insight you learn from evaluating this information. Why does the world work like this?

Some TED Talks that might help
Best Stats You Have Ever Seen
Insights on Poverty
Truth about HIV