Better World Flux [betterworldflux.com] is an impressive interactive data visualization created as an entry for the World Bank Apps for Development competition. The project aims to raise awareness for the UN Millennium Development Goals by letting users visualize and share the valuable stories that are hidden in the World Bank Open Data.
Flux basically consists of a powerful histogram view that summarizes the world state for a given year, with the color green representing 'good', and red being 'bad'. Within each color band, a number of countries are aggregated. The width of Flux ribbon corresponds to the total number of people living in those countries. Each country has a color based on a composite score calculated as the geometric mean of the user-selected indicators for any given year. These indicators can include aspects like 'Average years of total schooling', 'Happiness', 'Ratio of female to male primary enrollment', 'Access to Water', or 'Prevalence of HIV'. Users can thus choose the specific indicators and countries, explore the resulting histogram for trends and patterns over time, and share the resulting visualizations online.
Thnkx David!