Another Google Lab Experiment: Public Data Explorer

Mar 8, 2010 @ 6:08 PM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- google visualization

Google’s latest lab creation is their Public Data Explorer. Similar to GeoCommons Maker! and Gapminder, Google allows you to visualize data as a line graph, bar graph, bubble chart or a map. The visualizations will also dynamically change as the latest data becomes updated and available through their service.

It’s simple and can be useful but is still very limited in the number of data they currently have and is lacking the ability to export and download the data. But as with any Google Lab experiment, their Public Data Explorer is only a prototype and can easily be developed into something more powerful by their many engineers.

The following is an example of seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the US.

One thing I’ve noticed is the increase in services we’re seeing that allows us to visualize data based on cultural geographies. What I’m referring to is data separated by countries, states and cities. Despite this growth, there are still large numbers of datasets that cannot be captured by these cultural boundaries but are equally as important (i.e. climate and deforestation). Knowing how each of these are changing over time is crucial to understanding our planet yet only account for a small percentage of existing data.

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