Category Archives: Announcements

Improved country comparison and yearly trend line charts

One of the most popular sections in IndexMundi is the country comparison charting page. It allows you to chart one or more data series for one or more countries. An interesting example of what I’m talking about is a page that displays the population, GDP, and the number of people fit for military service for Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. If you’ve used the comparison page in the past you’ll notice that I’ve made three important improvements. First, I’ve updated the charts with the most recent CIA Factbook numbers. Second, I’ve cleaned up a number of data quality problems that affected some of the graphs. I’m confident that I’ve eliminated most errors, and hope that you’ll let me know if you find any discrepancies. Finally, I’ve changed the default chart type from vertical 3D bars to 2D lines. Trend data is easier to visualize through line charts. Enjoy!

IndexMundi Country Comparison Charts

United States Oil Imports

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has detailed data about US Crude Oil imports by country of origin. I used their data to create a chart showing US imports of crude oil and other petroleum products from 1993 to 2005. The chart shows that the top exporter of crude oil to the US is Mexico, followed by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. If all goes well I will be adding similar charts to IndexMundi for easy visualization of oil & gas production, supply, and distribution data.

US Oil Imports by Country of Origin

Is your country going to meet its millennium development goals?

Now that the millennium development goals section is available, I can check whether any given country is likely to meet its goals. Taking Bolivia as an example, I can see that some indicators are changing in the right direction, but others are not. For instance, the percentage of the population who consume less than one US dollar (purchasing power parity), changed from 20.4% to 14.4% between 1997 and 1999, a clear improvement. However, between 1999 and 2002 the percentage increased from 14.2% to 23.2%, a marked worsening. I’m assuming that the 1991 number (5.7%) is incorrect since it’s so much lower than subsequent measurements. If it were correct, it would mean that the 1990s was a completely lost decade.

I’m working on making it easier to keep track of these types of changes. I’ll probably add a scorecard-type of interface that will display all indicators graphically.

Millennium Development Goals

I have just finished creating the millennium development goals section for 224 countries. Although this information is available elsewhere, what makes our release unique is that I have pre-computed for each indicator the percent change from one year to the next, and also the cumulative percent change since the first measurement. I will soon be adding graphs and the ability to compare countries. Stay tuned.

Elevation Data

One of the most interesting NASA projects is the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. SRTM obtained elevation data at a global scale at an unprecedented resolution. When I learned about it, the first thought that came to my mind was that it would make perfect sense to link elevation data with the database of populated places I built using NIMA and USGS data sources. The task proved very challenging, primarily due to the volume of data involved. The effort was worth it though, because now you can go to the populated places section and find the elevation, in meters and feet, of every single city, town, and village of our planet. Check my hometown, for instance. La Paz is at an altitude of 3782 meters (12408 feet) above sea level.