Trendalyzer and sons

Explaining developments in the real world using statistical information and visual presentations developed in many ways since William Playfair‘s pioneer work.  One of the most impressive and most popular techniques are time animated scatter plots. And here the Roslings (Hans, his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna) created (in their Gapminder Foundation) the Trendalyzer Software.

‘ This software unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics. The current version of Trendalyzer is available since March 2006 as Gapminder World, a web-service displaying time series of development statistics for all countries.’ (from: http://www.gapminder.org/about-gapminder/history/)

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In March 2007 Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation. It’s now called Motion Chart and integrated into Google spreadsheet and Google public data.

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This kind of visualisation is since used by others, too.  Some examples:

NcomVA – a spin off of Linköping University in Sweden – introduces animated scatter plots in NcomVA’s eXplorer software, used i.e. by OECD.

See OECD’s Regional Statistics (Chapter Access to Education in Canada and US)

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The World Bank offers Data Visualizer:

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And from Egypt comes Epicsyst’s Trend Compass

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And this is surely not the whole story about Trendalyzer and its offspring. Give us some more examples!

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