Here’s something fun (and educational) to play with. It’s Google Gapminder, a fascinating new online data visualisation tool that lets you see correlations between various economic and social indicators, such as economic growth or percentage of the population with telephones. After you have chosen your indicators, click the ‘Play’ button to load datasets from progressive years to see how these indicators have evolved over time.
For example, here is the correlation between CO2 emissions and life expectancy, and here is the correlation between CO2 emissions and infant mortality. Both seem to support the hypothesis that access to energy has driven improvements in public health which have, as the graphs show, resulted in longer life expectancies and lower rates of infant mortality.
If anyone notices anything else interesting, feel free to post in the comments.
(via Scientific American)
6 comments ↓
Google does it yet again. Is there anything that they haven’t done!?
Here is another interesting one: income per capita against life expectancy with Saudi Arabia flagged. Click ‘Play’ and you can see how countries have developed over the years relative to KSA.
So what happened in 1981 to cause income per capita to slide back so severely? This was a period in which oil prices doubled because OPEC were cutting production (with KSA cutting more production than any other member). Saudi Arabia restored supply in 1987 and one can see on the chart that the income per capita started to increase (slightly) thereafter.
That’s interesting but this one is pretty depressing. Look what happened to life expectancy when Robert Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe.
This is great!
Aside regarding:
Child mortality / carbon emissions for Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, and the UK would seem to suggest no clear negative relationship between them, which would falsify the hypothesis when expressed as a general claim.
Salaams,
I’m still a bit cross with Google for removing Uruknet from the news: http://arbuthnot4iraq.blogspot.....aths.html. But they seem to be coming up with interesting stuff now and then. I didn’t know you could live up to eighty in Iceland…perhaps as a snowman.
On a related note, here’s an interesting HRW report on internet companies, including Google, and how they comply with Chinese government censorship.
Salaams,
Very interesting link, especially this argument by a Chinese blogger: “…Chinese people themselves are ultimately responsible for allowing their fellow countrymen to be censored, and that the ultimate solution is going to have to be initiated by the Chinese themselves.”
There is great truth in the above words.
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