Gapminder

Hans Rosling is a professor of international health in Sweden.  His background is in medicine and statistics.  He cofounded the Gapminder Foundation with some of his family members and developed a program called Trendalyzer.  The purpose of the software was to, “show major global development trends with animated statistics" (About Gapminder).   Trendalyzer’s purpose, “unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics” (History).  The data is presented in a sequence that allows patterns to be discerned over time.  In 2007, the Trendalyzer software was acquired by Google, but the tool remains at the Gapminder site.
The graphs display three different types of data.  In the graph below, the horizontal axis shows the average income per person per country.  The vertical axis shows the life expectancy in years per country.  The size of each circle represents the population for each country.  What makes the graphs unique is the Play button in the bottom left corner.  When you press play, the data becomes animated and you can see the circles move over time.  In the example below, you can view the change in income, life expectancy, and population of the course of the last century.

Uses in Education:

For a class discussing world cultures, Gapminder’s graphs are a great way to explore differences.  In the above example, it is very interesting to view how income impacts life expectancy, and to see the difference that across countries and continents.  This type of data would also be extremely useful in a class discussing world economics and politics.  A teacher could use one of Gapminder’s graphs to initiate a classroom discussion. 
The dataset available on Gapminder are numerous, and all of the data can be viewed and/or downloaded into an Excel format.  This would make it possible for students to perform further analysis on the same data.  The various datasets can also be combined in any way within the graphing display.  This makes it possible for students to view many different aspects of health, economy, education, and population.  For reports or projects, students could use the graphs to support their hypotheses. 
The data within the Gapminder database is expanding.  The website recently launched a section specifically for teachers.  Currently, the resources are limited, but there are some lesson guides available.  There is also a desktop version of the graphing application that allows people with limited Internet connectivity the ability to use the software.

Help and How-To:

I know that I am biased because of my personal affinity to statistical information, but Gapminder is a great balance between usability and ease.  When the graph is loaded within the web browser, there is a button that allows users to easily select data geared towards a specific line of inquiry.  If this is not enough, many of the elements of the graph can be tweaked or changed by clicking on them.  New datasets can be loaded on either axes, the lower and upper limit of circle size can be adjusted, and data can be grouped in various ways. 
There is a short video that explains using Gapminder graphs, and there is also a PDF document that illustrates the various graph functions.  Overall, there is not a lot of help, especially for students that may be unfamiliar with graphs.  They would need guidance to get them to the point that they could interact effectively with Gapminder.
Probably some of the most informative help on Gapminder and the usefulness of statistic is the videos of Hans Rosling.  He spoke at TED 7 separate times.  The following video illustrates his passion for the data, as well as some of the numerous insights that can occur from one or two different data combinations with Gapminder.