I Heart Google

I spent a good 90 minutes last night playing with Google's latest bit of genius .

If you're a data geek, rejoice.

My only complaint: The "Help" section isn't loading for me.

Comments

[mk]

ooohhh
aaaahhhh
excelllentttt

Seriously, I want to do stuff like that. Oh well, back to my TPS reports.

[:-]

You may want to change your underwear first, mk.

[JKP]

Damn you, Weigel...I've just wasted 20 minutes on this.....

[phocion]

Gapminder gave a pretty good talk at Google last year year about this way of looking at data.

[anon]

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
One thing to point out. Click on the blue dots (African countries) to highlight their "trails." Most of them seem to plummet in the 80's and 90's in terms of life expectancy.

[de stijl]

anon,

AIDS.

[pigwiggle]

best.google.app.ever.

[hmmm]

Where's Iraq?

[tomWright]

Yah but it requires FLASH, which I am not allowed to update on the PC I am using.

Reequireing FLASH is a poor move in general.

[anon]

de stijl,
Thanks. Honestly, I hadn't thought of that. (My assumption was civil and regional war casualties, and starvation.)
That's very sad.

[zeiner the lurker]

Yah but it requires FLASH, which I am not allowed to update on the PC I am using.

Reequireing [sic] FLASH is a poor move in general.

A script seems to messing with Flash Player 7 on my PC, causing my browser to hang up.

[zeiner the lurker]

Yah but it requires FLASH, which I am not allowed to update on the PC I am using.

Reequireing [sic] FLASH is a poor move in general.

A script seems to messing with Flash Player 7 on my PC, causing my browser to hang up.

[mediageek]

"Reequireing FLASH is a poor move in general."

No, disallowing it to be installed. Now that's a poor move.

[mediageek]

This is seriously cool.

[henry]

The most horrifying thing is to watch Rwanda when you play this thing.

[Pirate Jo]

I'm guessing mass genocide might have contributed to Rwanda's quick plunge. Memo to self: Don't live on any of the little blue dots!

[zeiner the lurker]

(Upgrading to Flash Player 9).

Thanks for link Radley, very cool.

[Rhywun]

Good thing I don't have any real work to do today.

[FinFangFoom]

Check out Botswana and South Africa with life expectancy on the left.

[Bob Z]

Plunging life expectancy in Africa in the 80's and 90's? A little thing called HIV, maybe?

[lunchstealer]

It's horrifying to watch the sudden plummetting life expectancy in Cambodia in 1978 and Rwanda in 1995. You just see them suddenly separate from the pack and start dropping, and usually dropping backward along whatever economic measure you choose to put on the x-axis.

And it's depressing to watch South Africa and the other blue dots start drifting down as HIV takes over in the late '80s and early '90s.

🙁

Still, apart from that, it's a fun ap. Check out the US Virgin Islands' C02/capita.

[lunchstealer]

The 'military budget as percent of total spending' link is too incomplete. All the interesting countries are off the list most of the time. Stupid secrecy. Spoiling all my fun.

[Pro Libertate]

All I know is that the United States still has a major obstacle to overcome before everlasting glory will be ours.

Ceterum censeo Luxembourginem esse delendam.

[Kwix]

What happens to the data for Bahamas and Puerto Rico circa 2000/02? The data points just drop off. I suppose "most recent" information may account for that.

It is interesting to be able to visualize how wealth is not a zero sum game when every country's income increases (per capita).

Very kewl app indeed, thanks Radley.

[Ken Shultz]

I was thinking about GDP per capita as it relates to life expectancy as that relates to health care.

...doesn't the graph suggest that a balanced budget and across the board tax cuts might do us better than universal health care?

Considering Britian's, America's and Canada's relative positions,...

[Postmodern Sleaze]

I love the way the China indicator slides across the map towards us like an ominous read Death Star... watching that is a thing of beauty. Especially when you notice India's big blue dot trying to catch up...

[Memnon]

Now if economic freedom could be loaded as an indicator... that would make my day!

[Pro Libertate]

Postmodern Sleaze,

My ten quatloos say that India overtakes China in a big way in the next few years or so. In fact, make it twenty quatloos. China's got some endemic flaws that India lacks, and the piper will be paid.

Incidentally, Japan is and will remain the great economic power in Asia. How easily we forget what that little island can do. And, once they've perfected their robotics technology, all the world will fall before their metallic minions.

[Chris Grieb]

This is great fun and I am going to play it a lot.

[Sam Franklin]

really makes you wonder where that hv came from doesn't it.

[GILMORE]

Hmm. Thanks for this dude! I'm a market analyst, and this visually depicts stuff I do in raw data all the time. What would be awesome-scmawsome would be if you could program a set of axes on time, then convert the output to like, animated GIF so you could load in PPT presentation. Slick.

[Postmodern Sleaze]

"My ten quatloos say that India overtakes China in a big way in the next few years or so. In fact, make it twenty quatloos. China's got some endemic flaws that India lacks, and the piper will be paid."

Yeah, but India's got serious flaws that China lacks as well. I'm guessing China's growth won't seriously slow until they've nearly matched the US in overall GDP (by purchasing power, though, not raw exchange)... PCGDP will still remain far lower. China is a much more... orderly... civilization, and, though libertarians dislike admitting this, orderly, conservative civilizations tend to build the best industrial economies (like Germany and Japan).

"Incidentally, Japan is and will remain the great economic power in Asia. How easily we forget what that little island can do. And, once they've perfected their robotics technology, all the world will fall before their metallic minions."

Japan's major comeback on the world scene is beginning, now that they've passed serious banking reforms and will soon have their constitution de-neutralized. As long as their population doesn't collapse, that is.

Yeah, I've always wondered what it is about large islands near large continents and their ability to produce countries that stand astride the world like a collossus... Japan and Great Britain in particular. I think that it's the combination of competition AND isolation- they're far enough away to be secure, but close enough to the action to know that they have to remain competitive in order to survive.

[henry]

The other interesting thing about China is when you plug in the fertility rate info--that "one child policy" was like a brick wall!

[mk]

I was initially surprised at how evenly distributed Urban population % was with Population. Then I hit the 'Play' button.

So fucking cool.

[mk]

My fave so far is 'Children per Woman (fertility rate)' by 'Economic Growth %'

pretty, pretty colors

[Eric]

for those interested in economic growth, search google for a paper called "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions", and go down the trail of follow-up papers

[Rhywun]

"Internet users per 1000 people" is fun. Watch North Korea sit at "0" until 2000 and then vanish. Watch Iran drop by ten times after 2002.

[Eddy]

Iraq isn't the only thing missing, Taiwan is not shown even though Hong Kong is. Just a guess but maybe the U.S. 'asked' to have Iraq kept off so it's yellow dot doesn't look like so many blue dots. Likewise, China probably 'asked' to keep Taiwan off the map but wanted to show off Hong Kong.

That said, it's still my favorite new chew toy.

[andy_D]

Sooo... much... data...

Thanks for posting this. I have the feeling I'll be surfing this data for a while. Genius interface. Makes me want to give money to Google. I really hope their company keeps doing well. That is, Thank you Google, for being so great... keep it up!

[K.T.]

absolutely shocking... the world is moving way too fast...

[Sam_H]

who has been to luxmburg and how much does that place rock?

[Pepe]

Percentage of US adult women using birth control peaked in 1995 at 76% and then dropped to 64 by 1999 (that's the latest year it goes to). Wonder why?

[Russ R]

andy_D:

"Makes me want to give money to Google."

You already have... didn't you notice the "Ads by google" column on the right side of the HnR page?

Both google and reason collected a bit of money just by virtue of you visiting this page. You could give them even more money by actually clicking on the ads.

[e]

Too bad it only goes back to 1980. Would be an interesting lesson for libertarians to show how countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan's GNP and life expectancy progressed in the post war II period with highly regulated economies, government-protected industries and well funded government-subsidized mass transit systems.

[sam_h]

"Percentage of US adult women using birth control peaked in 1995 at 76% and then dropped to 64 by 1999 (that's the latest year it goes to). Wonder why?"

Could an older population account for this? More "adult women" are post-fertilty age and don't need to take birth control. Also maybe more women have tied-tubes or husbands who were fixed.

[Kate]

Please, could you all get a life? It's a google application. -Rolls eyes.