New Database for Analyzing Millennium Development Goals Indicators: Trendalyzer

New Database for Analyzing Millennium Development Goals Indicators

The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals Indicators website is the official location to access data and information related to the 48 indicators used to track progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It has been recently updated with some very useful new materials. Some of these resources include:

Trendalyzer is a powerful tool for viewing time series data and assessing MDG progress over time. Trendalyzer allows users to visually manipulate MDG indicator statistics, plotting them geographically on a map or linearly on a graph. An animation feature enables users to track changes in country statistics since 1990. Users can even isolate and follow one or more countries of their choosing over the years represented. This kind of tool is a helpful supplement to the Trendalyzer (by GapMinder) data tables and charts on MDG progress in the fact that it is animated, displaying information in moving graphics over time and making trends easy to identify. For example, when viewing the data on the Millennium Development Goal reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds from 1990 to 2002 as a moving graphic, it is visually clear that under-five mortality in Cote dâ€™Ivoire and Iraq (among a few others) is actually increasing while under-five mortality is decreasing in the majority of countries represented. The Trendalyzer tool was created by GapMinder, a Swedish non-profit, and can be applied to a wide variety of data.