Measuring and Mapping Development

The trouble with development is working out what it is. Is it wealth and if so how do you measure it? Perhaps we could look at how much money a country has, but does that tell us if the money is spread across the population of a country? perhaps we look at other ways of measuring development like how long people live or how well educated they are? Even if we do work out a way of measuring development how do we find out and show which countries are most and least developed?
To make our lives easier others have tried to solve these problems for us. Take a look at this lovely graphic showing how wealth is spread across the world. Can you work out which are the poorest and richest parts of the world? Even more helpful is the gapminder site which allows you to create the most amazing and mindblowing graphs and maps on world development. A word of warning though it is not always easy to understand and you may need to take the tutorial. We will be using this in class though, so its worth taking time to understand it.