Friday, August 3

Gapminder - Free software that visualise human development

URL: http://www.gapminder.org/

"Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations."

"Why are Gapminder doing this? Gapminder work are due to a feeling of filling a gap. There has been a market failure in distributing global data. A lot of people are interested in the data, but do not get access to it (if they manage to access the data, they need to be advanced skilled statisticans to analyse it). Gapminder want´s to make the data more accessible and easier to use for instant analysis. There is no political agenda behind the work. The idea is that all people, independently of their political agenda, can use of this tools to easily improve their understanding about the complex society
..."

Gapminder visualizes and brings life to human development data over the last decades, and you can actually download the the different tools, presentations and documents (for free), which can for example be used in class to engage your students into understanding and caring more about this vital topic. It is simply awesome!

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