A2-RobertCarroll
From CS294-10 Visualization Fa07
Contents |
[edit] Domain
International Aid
[edit] Question
Does the amount of aid given by a country depend directly on its economic strength, or are some nations more generous for other reasons?
[edit] Dataset
The data set I used was from the United Nations Development Programme's 2006 Human Development report. The report assigns a "human development index" to nations based on various indicators like economics, health, education, and technology. The data can be found on the hdr website [1]. Specifically, I used data on Gross Domestic Product and "net official development assistance" or ODA, which were available in Excel documents. ODA data was only available for a subset of countries (mostly developed nations) so I removed the blank entries and transfered the columns to a text file to import into spotfire.
[edit] Visualization
The obvious choice for visualizing this data is a scatterplot, which yields the following result.
The relationship in the data is immediately apparent, and surprisingly linear. However, because of the large variation in the values a log-log plot may be more suitable.
The plot above shows the close relationship between gross domestic product and development assistance given.
I was surprised at the strong correlation in the plot, mostly because I recall hearing criticisms that the US gives a disproportionate amount of aid compared to other developed nations. Based on the graphs this maybe appears to be true to a small degree, but it's nothing very striking. Of course, this visualization only shows "official" aid and doesn't include anything about private donations.
