[Reader-list] Gap Minder

[Taha Mehmood]

Sure Monica!!

The visuals seem to be stunning.

The broad argument comes across as- with the rise in income- life
expectancy at birth increases, child mortality decreases, literacy
increases, and registered citizen decreases. Interesting, isn't it?

However, I was a bit wary of the ease with which such data could be
manipulated given that sourcing seems to be absent.

Also there seems to be a problem in representation.

For instance, a caveat listed on the site states that- 'The Kashmir
district has been included as an Indian territory only in order to
show the internal inequities of different Indian states and their
changes over time, and this does not represent or indicate any
political opinions of Gapminder Foundation.'

It is not clear what do they mean by 'The Kashmir district'??? Do we
have a district of Kashmir anywhere in the world???

Moreover all the Maps concerning India do not show the official GOI
representation of the political map of India.

I wonder why Data regarding registered citizens is given in absolutes
and not as a percentage of population as in other cases? What does it
mean to know that there are 177 849 749 registered citizens in UP in
2006???

Adult literacy is defined on the site as people who could read and
write a simple statement about their everyday life. We of course know,
that's the standard UNESCO definition. If this is the case, then I
really do not know how much of reality-as-it-is, is represented by
this slick software. Do all, so called adult literates of India can
really read and write a simple statement about their everyday life????
I highly doubt it.

Most of the data is correlated with income/person which uses 1990 PPP
international dollar as counting unit. Why??? we don't know. This
seems to be so arbitrary. Even Gapminder people seem to acknowledge it
in the caveat section- 'this data set is not up-to-date and quality
not satisfactory'. Now they want to shift to 2005. Why??? again we are
kept guessing.

The punchline goes 'Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact
based world view', huh!! I think the apparent certainty and simplicity
of the visual cartography is pretty terrifying.

Maybe someone should start compiling a counter site on lies, damned
lies and statistics. Now, wouldn't that be pretty ;)

Regards

Taha