Hard News by Russell Brown

9

Seeing the numbers

Most of the winners at last week's Australia New Zealand Internet Awards came from across the Tasman -- ironically, reversing the balance of last year, when the awards were held in Canberra. There hasn't been a lot of noise about, but I think one of the New Zealand winners in particular deserves a bit more boosting.

Wiki New Zealand visualises data. Specifically, it provides, clear, appropriate and shareable graphs depicting social and economic data about New Zealand. Intriguingly, it's also collaborative -- anyone can register to provide data, or access to data, or simply suggest improvements.

Its "About" page gets a bit touchy-feely, but I think this is a clean, useful service that should probably be in the conversation more than it is. Because good graphs cut through arguments. The following is a series of graphs currently at or near the top of the site. It tells a useful story about the New Zealand economy.

See, I could write that, but it would take a lot longer, and you might not read it. I'll look to use these graphs more often in posts and you should feel free to save them as PNG files and use the "file upload" button on Public Address to use them in comments. All the sharing stuff is behind the "download" button on each graph if you click through to the site. ( I think next time I'll experiment with presenting them at images in our photoblog template, but the embeds here will do for now. Note that you can click them to see a bigger version.)

I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear from you if you also had datasets to kick in, or ideas they might find useful.

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