Ed Toner
02-23-2004, 05:18 PM
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
NationMaster.com.
Where Stats Come Alive!
"astounding and easy to use"
- New York Times [reviews]
Welcome to NationMaster.com, a massive central data source and a handy way
to graphically compare nations. Using the form above, you can generate maps
and graphs with ease on all kinds of statistics. What's more, you can select
exactly which countries you want to include.
We currently have 921 stats, and this number is increasing all the time. We
want to be the web's one-stop resource for country statistics on anything
and everything, whether it be soldiers, olympic medals, tourists, English
speakers or wall plug voltages. You can also view profiles of individual
countries including their maps and flags. You can use correlation reports
and scatterplots to find relationships between variables. Integrated into
these is a full encyclopedia with over 200,000 articles.
We are constantly adding new features and new statistics, so do come back
regularly. And be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Categories
Agriculture
Crime
Currency
Democracy
Economy
Education
Energy
Environment
Geography
Government
Health
Identification
Introduction
Labor
Language
Manufacturing
Media
Military
People
Religion
Sports
Transportation
Regions
Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
Oceania
South America
Southeast Asia
Correlations are here! Thursday 12th February 2003
You can now request the top correlated variables for every variable on the
site, using our standard form (at the top of the page in green). It's under
"view:".
The results have been fascinating:
The best indicators of innovation and technological achievement is GDP per
capita, edging out the number of R&D personnel and time in education.
Corrupt countries tend to lack technology.
Countries where young women work tend to have a lot of old women working as
well.
Secondary school enrollment is inversely proportionate to the proportion of
population under 14. The plot shows no outliers.
The best predictor of motor vehicles per capita is the country's wealth back
in 1973. Newly rich countries don't buy cars quite as much?
Gender development is the best predictor all up. Better than GDP per capita
and population. It's much better than the most predictive measure of the
difference between rich and poor.
You will notice that scatterplots look nicer now countries can be
represented by their flags.
Every country now has population pyramids spanning a number of years.
275 new stats, supporter improvements Sunday 14th December 2003
NationMaster has exploded once again with 275 new variables. There are some
really interesting ones here. For example:
Military - aircraft, artillery, tank and helicopter holdings in Europe, as
well as overall weapons holdings
Economy - McDonalds restaurants and child poverty.
Education - hugely expanded including literacy levels in maths, reading and
science. Interesting also is how many children are reading comics and
novels.
Energy - you can now track oil production from 1972 to today .
Health - check out the incidence of breast cancer and overall cancer deaths.
Labor - strikes and working mothers
People - teenage birth rates, one person households, Nobel prize laureates
Also newly created Agriculture and Manufacturing categories allow you to
compare countries based on what they produce.
You can also now sign up as a supporter using your regular credit card and
be taking advantage of our premium features immediately. No PayPal accounts
required. We are also offering group license discounts for educational and
non-profit organizations. Support your favorite stat site today!
Our biggest ever upgrade! Saturday 18th October 2003
If you thought we'd been slowing down over the last 6 weeks, you'd be wrong.
We have a whole raft of new features - too many to mention. But here are the
main ones:
Better visualization
Scatterplots showing the relationship between any two stats you care to
name. *
Pie charts showing proportions. *
Printable versions of all graphs. *
Our color-coded maps now have legends explaining what the colors mean.
Encyclopedia improvements
Encyclopedia main page accessible from the top menu.
Greater integration into country profiles, giving you towns, famous people,
administrative area descriptions, history and much more.
Pictures accompanying articles.
Better formatting.
The items marked with an asterisk (*) are available only to supporters, but
by clicking on them you get a taste of what they're about. And subscriptions
are probably cheaper than you think. Help us keep NationMaster running!
Improved search Monday 22nd September 2003
Our search facility is now greatly improved. You can search across the whole
site including graphs, country profiles and encyclopedia entries. Stay
tuned - there are some big new features in the works.
Homeland highlighting Friday 5th September 2003
NationMaster now detects your country and makes it bold on all graphs it
appears in. Our Democracy category now has respectable coverage including
voter turnout for both presidential and parliamentary elections. We also now
follow the number of transnational parents and affiliates.
Encyclopedia is here! Monday 25th August 2003
We now have an encyclopedia with over 150,000 entries! The entries are often
very fresh and up to date. See for example the possible death of Saddam
Hussein and SARS. Hyperlinks to it are blended into the site's content. As
usual, we have more stats too, including suicide rates, DVD regions, local
call costs, English speakers and flights.
Get talking at our forums Monday 18th August 2003
Has something you've read here got you thinking? Want to know more? Got an
opinion? Now you can share it with other NationMaster users at our
discussion forums. They're nicely categorised the same way we do stats on
the site, so it should be easy to find your way around.
Stat maps are here! Friday 8th August 2003
Our stats are now even sexier with color-coded maps. All graph pages now
come with these info-maps built in. It's interesting how often the shading
changes gradually between neighbouring countries - check out forested land
and AIDS for example. You can click on the continents to zoom in. Then move
your mouse over individual countries to see their name. Clicking then brings
up their profiles. We'll be tinkering with this feature in weeks to come so
be sure to send in your comments. We also have a new category - Labor which
is quite interesting.
NationMaster - Past, Present and Future Thursday 26th June 2003
NationMaster now lets you look back in history with the popular GDP per
capita stat for the years 1820, 1900, 1950 and 1973. You can also look ahead
to 2050 with these projected population growth rates. There's now lots of
smoking stats and we're building pretty comprehensive environmental and
economic profiles of countries too. As you click around, you'll notice our
related stats boxes are a little more lateral (read: automated). More
interesting stuff to come!
Smashing the 400 Stat Barrier Sunday 8th June 2003
The world's biggest general stat site just got much bigger! Information is
spilling over into new categories - Energy, Education, Religion and Sports.
Now you can find out how many jews, cars and olympic medals a country has.
But new stats are cropping up everywhere. In People, we've got refugees and
divorce rates. Economy has tourists and corruption. Military stats now
include the number of army, navy and air force personnel. Geography now
includes the largest city and its rainfall. Nearly 100 stats were added, so
click around!
NationMaster Gets All Introspective Monday 2nd June 2003
We've been been bringing you the figures of the world for two weeks now. So
it's about time we started reporting on ourselves too! You can now view site
usage stats just as you do any other country data. Who's using the site?
Surprisingly enough, the top 4 countries per capita are not
English-speaking! We have really struck a chord with Icelanders, who have
used the site 10 times as much as the British. But it's early days. It's
interesting to watch a whole lot of links spring up in a country after their
major portal has featured us.
NationMaster was Yahoo's pick of the day 29th May, 2003.
NationMaster.com.
Where Stats Come Alive!
"astounding and easy to use"
- New York Times [reviews]
Welcome to NationMaster.com, a massive central data source and a handy way
to graphically compare nations. Using the form above, you can generate maps
and graphs with ease on all kinds of statistics. What's more, you can select
exactly which countries you want to include.
We currently have 921 stats, and this number is increasing all the time. We
want to be the web's one-stop resource for country statistics on anything
and everything, whether it be soldiers, olympic medals, tourists, English
speakers or wall plug voltages. You can also view profiles of individual
countries including their maps and flags. You can use correlation reports
and scatterplots to find relationships between variables. Integrated into
these is a full encyclopedia with over 200,000 articles.
We are constantly adding new features and new statistics, so do come back
regularly. And be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Categories
Agriculture
Crime
Currency
Democracy
Economy
Education
Energy
Environment
Geography
Government
Health
Identification
Introduction
Labor
Language
Manufacturing
Media
Military
People
Religion
Sports
Transportation
Regions
Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
Oceania
South America
Southeast Asia
Correlations are here! Thursday 12th February 2003
You can now request the top correlated variables for every variable on the
site, using our standard form (at the top of the page in green). It's under
"view:".
The results have been fascinating:
The best indicators of innovation and technological achievement is GDP per
capita, edging out the number of R&D personnel and time in education.
Corrupt countries tend to lack technology.
Countries where young women work tend to have a lot of old women working as
well.
Secondary school enrollment is inversely proportionate to the proportion of
population under 14. The plot shows no outliers.
The best predictor of motor vehicles per capita is the country's wealth back
in 1973. Newly rich countries don't buy cars quite as much?
Gender development is the best predictor all up. Better than GDP per capita
and population. It's much better than the most predictive measure of the
difference between rich and poor.
You will notice that scatterplots look nicer now countries can be
represented by their flags.
Every country now has population pyramids spanning a number of years.
275 new stats, supporter improvements Sunday 14th December 2003
NationMaster has exploded once again with 275 new variables. There are some
really interesting ones here. For example:
Military - aircraft, artillery, tank and helicopter holdings in Europe, as
well as overall weapons holdings
Economy - McDonalds restaurants and child poverty.
Education - hugely expanded including literacy levels in maths, reading and
science. Interesting also is how many children are reading comics and
novels.
Energy - you can now track oil production from 1972 to today .
Health - check out the incidence of breast cancer and overall cancer deaths.
Labor - strikes and working mothers
People - teenage birth rates, one person households, Nobel prize laureates
Also newly created Agriculture and Manufacturing categories allow you to
compare countries based on what they produce.
You can also now sign up as a supporter using your regular credit card and
be taking advantage of our premium features immediately. No PayPal accounts
required. We are also offering group license discounts for educational and
non-profit organizations. Support your favorite stat site today!
Our biggest ever upgrade! Saturday 18th October 2003
If you thought we'd been slowing down over the last 6 weeks, you'd be wrong.
We have a whole raft of new features - too many to mention. But here are the
main ones:
Better visualization
Scatterplots showing the relationship between any two stats you care to
name. *
Pie charts showing proportions. *
Printable versions of all graphs. *
Our color-coded maps now have legends explaining what the colors mean.
Encyclopedia improvements
Encyclopedia main page accessible from the top menu.
Greater integration into country profiles, giving you towns, famous people,
administrative area descriptions, history and much more.
Pictures accompanying articles.
Better formatting.
The items marked with an asterisk (*) are available only to supporters, but
by clicking on them you get a taste of what they're about. And subscriptions
are probably cheaper than you think. Help us keep NationMaster running!
Improved search Monday 22nd September 2003
Our search facility is now greatly improved. You can search across the whole
site including graphs, country profiles and encyclopedia entries. Stay
tuned - there are some big new features in the works.
Homeland highlighting Friday 5th September 2003
NationMaster now detects your country and makes it bold on all graphs it
appears in. Our Democracy category now has respectable coverage including
voter turnout for both presidential and parliamentary elections. We also now
follow the number of transnational parents and affiliates.
Encyclopedia is here! Monday 25th August 2003
We now have an encyclopedia with over 150,000 entries! The entries are often
very fresh and up to date. See for example the possible death of Saddam
Hussein and SARS. Hyperlinks to it are blended into the site's content. As
usual, we have more stats too, including suicide rates, DVD regions, local
call costs, English speakers and flights.
Get talking at our forums Monday 18th August 2003
Has something you've read here got you thinking? Want to know more? Got an
opinion? Now you can share it with other NationMaster users at our
discussion forums. They're nicely categorised the same way we do stats on
the site, so it should be easy to find your way around.
Stat maps are here! Friday 8th August 2003
Our stats are now even sexier with color-coded maps. All graph pages now
come with these info-maps built in. It's interesting how often the shading
changes gradually between neighbouring countries - check out forested land
and AIDS for example. You can click on the continents to zoom in. Then move
your mouse over individual countries to see their name. Clicking then brings
up their profiles. We'll be tinkering with this feature in weeks to come so
be sure to send in your comments. We also have a new category - Labor which
is quite interesting.
NationMaster - Past, Present and Future Thursday 26th June 2003
NationMaster now lets you look back in history with the popular GDP per
capita stat for the years 1820, 1900, 1950 and 1973. You can also look ahead
to 2050 with these projected population growth rates. There's now lots of
smoking stats and we're building pretty comprehensive environmental and
economic profiles of countries too. As you click around, you'll notice our
related stats boxes are a little more lateral (read: automated). More
interesting stuff to come!
Smashing the 400 Stat Barrier Sunday 8th June 2003
The world's biggest general stat site just got much bigger! Information is
spilling over into new categories - Energy, Education, Religion and Sports.
Now you can find out how many jews, cars and olympic medals a country has.
But new stats are cropping up everywhere. In People, we've got refugees and
divorce rates. Economy has tourists and corruption. Military stats now
include the number of army, navy and air force personnel. Geography now
includes the largest city and its rainfall. Nearly 100 stats were added, so
click around!
NationMaster Gets All Introspective Monday 2nd June 2003
We've been been bringing you the figures of the world for two weeks now. So
it's about time we started reporting on ourselves too! You can now view site
usage stats just as you do any other country data. Who's using the site?
Surprisingly enough, the top 4 countries per capita are not
English-speaking! We have really struck a chord with Icelanders, who have
used the site 10 times as much as the British. But it's early days. It's
interesting to watch a whole lot of links spring up in a country after their
major portal has featured us.
NationMaster was Yahoo's pick of the day 29th May, 2003.