The world as you've never seen it before.

5.82 million children die each year from swallowing tainted gum.

Did you actually read that statistic?  I made it up.  But did you read it, or did your eyes effortlessly glide over the horrifically large number of children killed by contaminated candy, already looking through this post for something more stimulating than black and white digits in a row?  The incredible website Worldmapper has come up with a compellingly simple way to convey the dizzying number of statistics associated with development work.  In short, they re-size each country according to the variable being mapped.  You should really poke around the array of maps on their site.  I chose five maps primarily related to development as examples, but there are also categories for everything from fuel and education to religion and pollution.  Because the images speak for themselves, I've presented the maps without comment.

Nurses Working

Cholera Deaths

Living on $1 Per Day

 

Maternal Deaths

Vaccine-Preventable Deaths

So, loyal readers, what do you think?  About the maps themselves, the numbers they convey?    Anything surprising?  Intriguing?  I could talk about this stuff all day long.