Gapminder: see how countries change over time with bubble charts
Free tools from a Swedish non-profit that animate development data over time, best known for the moving bubble chart of income and health.
The site: Gapminder Tools. Cost: Free. Useful for: culture and countries.
What it is
Gapminder is an independent Swedish foundation, founded in 2005 by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling. Its first software, Trendalyzer, produced the animated bubble chart that Hans Rosling made famous in his talks. The current version, Gapminder Tools, displays time series of development statistics for all countries and many regions within them.
Gapminder states that its tools and teaching materials are free and always will be. Alongside the tools it runs Dollar Street, which shows daily life in homes at different income levels, and a data page where you can preview an indicator and download it as CSV or XLSX.
Use it for
- Seeing how income, health and population have moved together over decades
- Challenging your assumptions about a market before you research it in detail
- Teaching or presenting development trends in a memorable way
- Downloading a single indicator for a quick analysis
The value is perspective. A few minutes with the animated chart often corrects an outdated picture of a country before you spend time on detailed research.
How to use it
- Open Gapminder Tools from gapminder.org.
- Start with the bubble chart, where each bubble is a country.
- Choose the measures you care about for each axis.
- Play the animation to watch the chart move through time, and select countries to follow their path.
- To work with the numbers, go to the data page, preview an indicator and download it as CSV or XLSX.
Pick two or three comparison countries before you press play. Following a few bubbles is far easier than watching the whole world move at once.
Example
A founder thinking about a consumer product for Bangladesh can follow Bangladesh on the bubble chart of income against life expectancy and compare its path with India and Vietnam. The animation shows how far incomes have moved, a useful prompt before turning to detailed market data.
Watch out for
- Some indicators are compiled or estimated by Gapminder, so check the documentation for each one.
- The charts show broad patterns, not the detail needed for a business case.
- Animated charts are easy to over-read, so confirm any striking pattern in the underlying data.
It works well alongside Our World in Data, World Bank Open Data and Hofstede Insights Country Comparison tool.
Checklist
Put it to work
Recap cards
Tap a card to check yourself.
Sources and credits
