If you click just one link from TWB, please do yourself a favor and click this one. It will take you to one of the coolest, most useful, most educational tools that I have ever discovered. The tool is called Gap Minder, and it was developed by Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor of International Health. Basically, Gap Minder uses the simplicity of circles and their motion to allow the viewer to digest complicated data. By using the size and color of each circle to represent information (respectively the population and continent location of a country), one can have the axes represent everything from child mortality rates to CO2 emissions. Once you’ve set all the inputs (which takes a few minutes at most), click the play button and watch as the circles fly about through time, elucidating complex trends in a simple fashion that nearly anyone can comprehend.

Enough of me. Just click the link.

Gap Minder

I also recommend that you watch this talk given by Hans Rosling at the 2007 TED Conference, which is how I first learned about Gap Minder. It gives you a good idea of the possibilities of this tool.