I just came across the coolest bit of data visualization I’ve seen in a while: Worldmapper. Using a technique I blogged about a couple of years ago, the site provides maps that visually render a big collection of datasets comparing the nations of the world along various economic, social, and environmental dimensions. A few obvious examples are total population, GDP, and HIV incidence. As you can see, the area of each nation is distorted to show the nation’s standing, giving you a quick, effective, and extremely cool way to visualize geographical data in a single parameter.

Naturally no collection of data like this could avoid being just a little bit politically tendentious, but for the most part this is a pretty objective look at the world. Indeed, I think critics of the United States (who normally thrive on comparisons to other nations in metrics like the impossibly vague “Gender Empowerment“) will find that this nation acquits itself rather well on the whole. This country appears to be a good and just place to live.

Which, I’m quick to point out, is due in no small part to our good showing in the Home Work Hours by Men cartogram, which is substantially due to my doing the dishes on a regular basis. But really: you’re welcome.

I’m kind of curious whether open-source tools exists to build these diagrams. Michael Gastner provides the code he used to generate the 2004 election maps, but that code requires a commercial GIS tool called ArcGIS. The key piece of functionality seems to be the conversion from shapefile format (which is apparently ubiquitous) to ArcInfo’s ungenerate format (which seems to be always a derived and temporary format). I think if I can do that transformation with a free tool, I can make my own cartograms of stuff. And how much fun would that be?

h/t O’Reilly Radar

P.S. Yes, it is a bit odd for me not to post anything for almost a year, then to come up with this seemingly trivial little link to something I think is cool. However, this proves that I’m thinking about my blog again. Perhaps I’ll post something of more substance soon.

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• Posted by Tim on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 12:34:58 pm PST
• Category: Miscellany
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