Mind the Gap
by Bijan Parsia
Hans Rosling is someone I want to take a course from (hey! he has a weblog). He is an amazing speaker, as can be seen in his 2006 talk Myths about the developing world (given about a year ago). (Hat tip to lemonoder for the link.) He’s funny, witty, deep, and engaging…what a treat to watch! The viz tool he used is available and he uses it very well. I poked at it and it’s pretty darn easy to use. (I was fascinated by carbon dioxide emissions per capita vs. income per capita. I tracked China, Iran, Hungary, Japan, the UK, and the US. You might want to try a linear scale on the y-axis.)
At the end of his talk, he spoke of the need to make the data searchable. He has the front ends, but data access is a big issue. Semwebbers, let us step up! Forget our favorite tool or language! This is what we should want to see and help make happen however we can!
