Gapminder Tools

Gapminder Tools animates global statistics so you can watch countries move through time. The classic chart plots income against life expectancy, with a bubble for every country sized by population. Press play and the bubbles drift across the screen as decades pass.

The point is to challenge assumptions. Many people carry a mental picture of the world that is decades out of date, and seeing the real data move is surprisingly persuasive. You can swap in other indicators for either axis, change colors and sizes, and trace individual countries.

Gapminder was co-founded by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund, and the tools are free to use. It works on phones, though a larger screen shows the bubbles better. Related: /site/our-world-in-data and /category/data-viz.