March 1, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 5)

URL:
http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/index.html

Rating:
Strong Points: Effective communication tools
Weak Points: Mostly eye candy

Summary:
By adulthood, we have all had at least one of those moments where something happened and, as a result, we never looked at the world the same way again. I thought of that when I discovered this unusual site. As a matter of fact, its entire focus is designed to make you look at the world totally differently. The idea here is to present quantitative information in an unorthodox manner, specifically to use information about various countries and then to scale the size of each country proportional to the magnitude of the relevant value for that country. Projected on a world map, the result will cause you to see the world differently. The advantage of this approach, as I see it, is that we are reminded in the perspectives shown of how what we do stacks up with the rest of the world. That isn’t a bad thing.

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