Analysing global development

Raw data

2015 map

1975

1990

2000

2010

2015

Combined figure

Google map

Find all the countries with populations above 75 million

Attribution

The idea for the data presentation was provided by the work of Hans Roslin, who died in 2017. Professor Roslin was considered to be one of the greatest data communicator of all time. Roslin’s skill was an ability to select informative ways of displaying large data sets in order to engage the audience. There are many videos of his talks on You Tube and Ted talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Roslin’s original figures were constructed by a team of data analysts, programmers and analysts working with the professor. The data used by the professor is loaded on our BU geoserver and can be analysed by students. This is a demonstration of how large global data sets can be analysed visually using R code.