Ang Peregrino Recommends 70: GapMinder

Gap­Min­der
URL: http://​www​.gap​min​der​.org/

Gapmin­der is about unveil­ing the beauty of sta­tis­tics for a fact based world view.

I first learned about it in a TEDtalk given by Hans Rosling (shown below).

Gap­min­der is a non-profit ven­ture pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able global devel­op­ment and achieve­ment of the United Nations Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals by increased use and under­stand­ing of sta­tis­tics and other infor­ma­tion about social, eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal devel­op­ment at local, national and global levels.

We are a mod­ern “museum” that helps mak­ing the world under­stand­able, using the Internet.

It was founded in Stock­holm by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2005. Gap­min­der is reg­is­tered as a Foun­da­tion at Stock­holm County Admin­is­tra­tion Board (Län­styrelsen i Stock­holm) with reg­is­tra­tion num­ber (organ­i­sa­tion­snum­mer) 802424–7721. (The con­sti­tu­tion can be found here)

Gap­min­der does not award any grants. It is an oper­at­ing foun­da­tion that pro­vides sevices as defined by the board, some­times as col­lab­o­ra­tive projects with uni­ver­si­ties, UN organ­i­sa­tions, pub­lic agen­cies and non-governmental organisations.

The ini­tial activ­ity was to con­tinue devel­op­ment of the Tren­d­a­lyzer soft­ware. This soft­ware unveils the beauty of sta­tis­ti­cal time series by con­vert­ing bor­ing num­bers into enjoy­able, ani­mated and inter­ac­tive graph­ics. The cur­rent ver­sion of Tren­d­a­lyzer is avail­able since March 2006 as Gap­min­der World, a web-service dis­play­ing time series of devel­op­ment sta­tis­tics for all countries.

In March 2006 Google acquired Tren­d­a­lyzer from the Gap­min­der Foun­da­tion and the team of devel­op­ers who for­merly worked for Gap­min­der has joined Google in Cal­i­for­nia since April 2007. (His­tory of Gapminder)

Gap­min­der Foun­da­tion now fills the Tren­d­a­lyzer with sta­tis­ti­cal con­tent and use the result­ing ani­ma­tions to ful­fill our aim by:

* Mak­ing time series freely avail­able in Gap­min­der World and Gap­min­der Coun­tries.
* Pro­duc­ing videos, Flash pre­sen­ta­tions and PDF charts show­ing major global devel­op­ment trends with ani­mated sta­tis­tics and col­or­ful graphics.

All with the inten­tion of being a “fact tank” that pro­motes a fact based world view.