- Go to the Gapminder data site (founded by Hans Rosling). The x and y axes can be changed with the little arrows. The year can be changed with the slider at the bottom. You can even have the plot play through time. Each bubble represents a nation and can be selected and deselected in the right panel. There’s a two minute “How to” video at the top as well. Pick at least one configuration (life expectancy vs income in the UK and Cuba over the past 80 years, for example). Try any combination(s) you like (no wrong answers here). Write what data you are displaying. Write about what you see or what surprises you, if anything. As best you can, connect what you see to ideas in previous readings from Rosling, West, Sen, another course, or from your experience.
- For this exploration, I chose to look specifically at India and Gapminder’s data related to India’s internet usage. I chose these configurations in order to get a better understanding of how the rapid expansion of the internet has affected India, which is the topic I chose to explore for the annotated bibliography project.
- I started by graphing India’s percentage of total internet users compared to the country’s child mortality. Those figures are listed below, starting in 2000 and ending in 2018, the most recent data point available.
- India in 2000: 0.07% internet users, chilhood mortality 88/1000
- India in 2006: 4.00% internet users, chilhood mortality 68/1000
- India in 2012: 15.1% internet users, chilhood mortality 49/1000
- India in 2018: 34.5% internet users, chilhood mortality 35/1000
- As the years went on, the number of internet users and the childhood mortality both improved, which was expected. One thing I noticed was that 34.5% seemed like a low percentage of the country with access to the internet. It was still a very rapid growth, going from less than one percent over a third within two decades, but it was not as large of an end percentage as I thought it might be.
- Next, I compared India’s total number of internet users to the United States’ total number, in order to get a better grasp of what the percentages above really meant.
- India in 2000: 7.10M internet users, US in 2000: 140M internet users
- India in 2006: 46.7M internet users, US in 2006: 225M internet users
- India in 2012: 193M internet users, US in 2012: 226M internet users
- India in 2018: 471M internet users, US in 2018: 287M internet users
- India growth since 2000: 66x, US growth since 2000: 2.1x
- While the US had twenty times as many users as India in 2000, the US’ growth was much slower in comparison. Over these 18 years, the US’ total user count had doubled. Growing up during this period, this feels like an extreme amount of growth. Many facets of life in the US have changed since 2000. When I see how India’s users have grown by 66 times of what they were in 2000, I can’t imagine how quick that must have felt. Even though 34.5% felt like a small percentage to me, India by 2018 had almost twice the total users that the US did, emphasizing how much larger the country is. The large population coupled with the extreme expansion of internet access are what made me interested in exploring this topic through the annotated bibliography. In the US, I feel that technology is changing rapidly. How much stronger is that feeling within India? What kind of effects has that had on the economy, infrastructure, and culture of the country? In my bibliography, I explore accounts of these changes in different aspects of life.
Back to main page.