DATA-150-Emily-Pettinato

Go to the Gapminder data site (founded by Hans Rosling). The x and y axes can be changed with the little arrows. The year can be changed with the slider at the bottom. You can even have the plot play through time. Each bubble represents a nation and can be selected and deselected in the right panel. There’s a two minute “How to” video at the top as well.

Pick at least one configuration (life expectancy vs income in the UK and Cuba over the pat 80 years, for example). Try any combination(s) you like (no wrong answers here). Write what data you are displaying. Write about what you see or what surprises you, if anything. As best you can, connect what you see to ideas in previous readings from Rosling, West, Sen, another course, or from your experience.

One configuration I displayed was CO2 emissions in tonnes per person vs popultion in 2017 (the most recent year they have data from) with the size of each country representative of there CO2 emission rates. I was surprised to see that the countries with the highest CO2 emissions where not the super power, highly developed countries I expected. Instead, as you can see in the screenshots below, the countries with the top three highest emission rates were Kuwait, Trinidad and Tobago, and Qatar, three countries that are considered to be still developing. I had been expecting China or India to have the highest, but again to my surprise, they had middle of the pack rates. This reminded me alot of the ted talk by Hans Rosling that we watched at the beginning of the semester, and how most people’s world view is skewed. I found this very fitting, cosidering that Gapminder was started by him to help with that exact problem.