Google Public Data Explorer
Today, Google has released their Public Data Explorer. With it, users can create interactive charts and graphs relating to various public data. The data available for the charts goes up to 2007. With the tool users can make bar graphs, bubble charts, and maps. Categories for the charts include Economy, Environment, Global Links, People, States and Markets, and World View. The number of factors that can be compared to each country in the bubble chart is wild. If you wanted you could cross reference birth rates with forest areas. Once you have chosen your topics for the x-axis and y-axis, you can hit the play button and animate the movement of the growth and decline from the year 1960 to 2007. You can also limit the size of the chosen population by selecting a sample size based on one of the selectable factors.
The Map screen is similar to the bubble chart, but here you only get to select a size factor. On this page the bubbles that represent countries are floating over a map of the world.
The Bar graph displays each county as a blue bar. You can select countries to highlight by checking the countries box in the list of countries on the left side of the screen. Like the map, you can only select a size factor to compare.
There is also the traditional line graph to display the results for your chosen countries. As with the previous two, only one factor can be compared.
At first look, this is a neat tool that I will need to spend more time with. It reminds me of looking up statistical charts for countries in encyclopedias back in school.
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