Gapminder

In its own words, Gapminder is “an independent Swedish foundation with no political, religious or economic affiliations. Gapminder is a fact tank, not a think tank. Gapminder fights devastating misconceptions about global development. Gapminder produces free teaching resources making the world understandable based on reliable statistics. Gapminder promotes a fact-based worldview everyone can understand.  Gapminder collaborates with universities, UN, public agencies and non-governmental organizations.”

In our words, Gapminder is a goldmine of geographical data that is presented in a way that’s easy to understand and quickly and easily shows changes in data over time.

The website presents data in a range of ways. Below is an example.

Refreshingly, in a world of fake news, Gapminder promotes a new way of thinking about the world and the society called Factfulness. It is the habit of carrying opinions that are based on solid facts.

Gapminder was founded in Stockholm on February 25, 2005, by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling. In 2006, Hans Rosling held his first TED talk on “The best statistics you’ve never seen” (see below). It became one of the most seen TED talks ever, thanks to its unique combination of knowledge-testing, animating bubble charts and storytelling about global development.

Gapminder has produced a range of teaching resources to support teaching Factfulness. Factfulness posters and presentations been developed and are free to download.

Another resource worth looking at is the Factfulness collaborative scheme of learning being developed by Alan Parkinson (@Geoblogs).

Anthony Bennett