The Design of Information

I’m impressed with two things about the World Bank’s approach to data: first, their commitment to openness in sharing data with the world, and second, their devotion to data visualization. They have also done a nice job inviting exploration with the way they have organized their data website.

Interesting to see that the mortality rate for children under 5 in the US is about 37% higher than the average of high income OECD countries.

And the US spends way more on healthcare than almost any other country in the world. Maybe we’re not spending it on the young.

Note: The World Bank is the source of data for the sample I gave a while back using the Google Public Data Explorer.

Doing research for a project today, I stumbled across a powerful data visualization tool – the Public Data Explorer from Google. The power is in the stories that are told as you scan through the data over time. Two dramatic stories involving Rwanda and China come to light in the World Development Indicators data for fertility rate and life expectancy at birth. And these are just two of the parameters available in this data set – there are many others. I could spend all day…