I recently found a fascinating website I'd never heard of before called Gapminder, which offers the beautiful tag line of "Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view". It's a non-profit initiative founded in 2005 to develop a program named "Trendalyzer" and provide accurate statistical information about world development trends. Unsurprisingly, it was acquired by Google in 2007.
The actual interface is a little confusing at first, for someone without much experience with statistics, but offers really comprehensive help and tutorials. The difficulties I had at first were simply due to the huge amounts of data and interactivity. At the time of writing, it offered world statistics for 430 indicators, including aid received, rates of teenage pregnancy and life expectancy, which can all be graphed on separate axes. These graphs can then be played to show development over time. It is really quite a beautiful way to visualise and make comprehensible world statistics. It also offers help and suggestions for teachers who want to make use of the website.
I really love this side of the web, the idea that information is power, and everyone's birthright. Which is probably the reason I'm studying to be a librarian.
http://www.gapminder.org/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2011420124_hans_rosling_to_reveal_zen_of.html
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