I found this awesome map on Dr. Stephen Hicks's website. This map was created by Gapminder - a non profit foundation that promotes sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.
My first reaction was 'wow '! This map shows a lot of data on health (life expectancy at birth) and money (GDP per person in US dollars) for almost all the countries in the world. This map does a fantastic job in showing information for countries that I would not have imagined. For example Qatar, which can be seen on the top right. However when I started looking for patterns in the data, I quickly got confused.
The X axis of this map starts at 45 years instead of zero. One can make many misinterpretations about the relevance of life expectancy at birth when comparing data between countries. For example, how can I better understand the gap of life expectancy at birth between Zimbabwe and Afghanistan? This leads to my other questions. Since this map is static, how do I see a clear gap in life expectancy between countries by continent ? What do bubble charts represent?
The use of colours by region is probably not necessary since the map has many countries that are scattered all over the map. In fact, when I first read the map, I initially thought that countries were placed on the image as per the World Map. It took me a while to understand this map. Some colours are also too strong. For instance, I find that yellow is a colour that is hard to look at.
3 This map's strength is in showing many complex information (low-income to high income countries, life expectancy at birth, GDP, and population) on a single image. However, its usefulness can be enhanced by creating a simple and interactive map.
Let's take a look at a similar map on Tableau public.
I can already see the benefits of using Tableau to create a powerful and simple interactive chart or map. Some principles on Data Visualisation that I have learned so far such as 'keep it simple' or 'tell folks how it works' could have been applied on the map created by Gapminder to generate a more useful map.
It was interesting that you noted getting confused when you attempted to dive deep into the data. I had the same experience. Good job on breaking down the complex and large data page.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your sentiments about colour on this visualization. The yellow was quite hard to look at. I also found it quite confusing that the yellow on the bubbles was at the right, but the yellow on the smaller world map was on the left? I also agree that there is a lot of great information provided on this visualization, however I feel as though separating the information would allow the user to understand it and use it!
ReplyDeleteNice work explaining a very visually busy graphic. Like you I had a hard time interpreting certain aspects of this graphic like the use of colours by region. Overall I think the map could be simplified quite a bit for clarity and I agree that the Tableau map is much more effective at displaying the information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, that the X-asis should start at 0 instead of 45 and that the colours are not really necessary. It was a good idea to show that the second map is much easier to read and to point out the benefits of tableau.
ReplyDeletei have same feeling when i first saw this map, "wow". but after that, i start thinking if this map contains too much information and what are bubbles mean. also, the horizontal should start with 0 so that people will not confuse about data and misunderstand it
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I really enjoyed the graphic you've chosen. I like your use of writing from 3rd person perspective and how you give me your initial reactions to the image and then your critique. Very thorough and well done! P.S. Great use of nimbus as well!
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