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Visualize Population, Unemployment, Health, Other Data

SUMMARY: The Google Public Data Explorer offers ways to visualize huge amounts of data and present it on web pages.

To help visualize large amounts of data such as health issues, unemployment rates, and population, Google has created the "Public Data Explorer" tool. With this you can access a variety of data resources such as Eurostat, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the World Bank, and generate line graphs, bar graphs, maps, or bubble charts.

Depending on the data, you can perform comparisons, adjust colors, change the timeline, and further manipulate the data. For example, the below screenshot shows a visual representation of the population of the U.S. - the bigger the circle, the larger the population concentration in a particular state:

U.S. Population in July, 2009

Further manipulation shows the population of 0 to 4 year olds in three southwestern states, California, Arizona, and Nevada, as a bar graph:

Comparison of U.S. population, ages 0 to 4 years, between three states

And another data set can show the monthly unemployment rate for European countries; the larger the circle, the higher the rate:

Europe unemployment rate

Charts can be embedded into web pages, and the visuals automatically update when new data is available.

To access this tool, click the below link. Then, click the "Explore the data" button or view some of the example charts on-page:

* Google Public Data Explorer

When this tip was written, this tool was part of Google labs. Thus features, instructions, and screenshots are subject to change.