A chart Hans Rosling would have loved

I came across this chart from the OurWorldinData website, and this one would make the late Hans Rosling very happy.

If you went to Professor Rosling's talk, he was bitter that the amazing gains in public health, worldwide (but particularly in less developed nations) during the last few decades have been little noticed. This chart makes it clear: note especially the dramatic plunge in extreme poverty, rise in vaccinations, drop in child mortality, and improvement in education and literacy, mostly achived in the last few decades.

This set of charts has a simple but powerful message. It's the simplicity of execution that really helps readers get that powerful message.

The text labels on the left and right side of the charts are just perfect.

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Little things that irk me:

I am not convinced by the liberal use of colors - I would make the "other" category of each chart consistently gray so 6 colors total. Having different colors does make the chart more interesting to look at.

Even though the gridlines are muted, I still find them excessive.

There is a coding bug in the Vaccination chart right around 1960.

 

Comments

[Paulie D]

If I remember correctly, the weird bug around vaccinations in 1960s is an attempt to show uncertainty of the estimate.

[CanViewpoint]

I saw that pass my Twitter stream as well and was quite impressed too. Your recommendations to improve the chart are bang on. I'd like to see the chart redone with grey as you describe.