[Reader-list] Gap Minder

[Isaac souweine]

Hi All -

Here is another cool data visualization project.

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/

Not sure what angle IBM has on this, but pretty nice to see what they have
done.

Also, interesting note on Gapminder: the technology, called "trendalyzer",
is from Swedish academics (I believe), but as of 2006, it is now the
property of Google. State of the world I guess.

Finally, I wonder if there is a way to take the discussion of these types of
technology passed the nostrum of "lies, damn lies. . ". For me, the
correlations highlighted by these programs represent a boon to political
discourse and rational decision making. More generally, the overlap of
aesthetics and epistemology implied by these technologies is something that
I would think list members would be well-positioned to discuss.

Best,
Isaac

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Taha Mehmood
<2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>wrote:

> 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
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