Love for Life

NationMaster

Welcome to NationMaster, a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD. Using the form above, you can generate maps and graphs on all kinds of statistics with ease.

 

 

 

 

 

We want to be the web's one-stop resource for country statistics on everything from soldiers to wall plug voltages.

You can also view profiles of individual countries including their maps and flags, use correlation reports and scatterplots to find relationships between variables, and refer to fully integrated encyclopedia with over one million articles.

NATIONMASTER AND FACTBITES TOP WEB 2.0 APPS
Thursday, 10 July 2008
We are honoured to be listed among Australia's best web 2.0 applications this week. Ross Dawson produced a list for the prestigious Business Review Weekly showing our most internationally successful, innovative sites.

Two of our sites, FactBites and NationMaster, made the grade.

Geoff Evason put together a list ranking according to Quantcast traffic data alone. The list seems to have disappeared though, so I've reproduced it myself:

1. 1134 retailmenot.com
2. 6423 bugmenot.com
3. 18686 nationmaster.com
4. 41362 uvouch.com
5. 48887 minti.com
6. 53051 redbubble.com
7. 74603 atlassian.com
8. 76818 mebeam.com
9. 87651 spyk.com
10. 129624 swapace.com
11. 148185 blocklayer.com
12. 165573 fwditon.com
13. 195584 inthemix.com.au
14. 199477 globalsurfari.com
15. 203200 pikistrips.com
16. 222399 rememberthemilk.com
17. 280084 rocketreader.com
18. 332987 factbites.com
19. 426879 mig33.com
20. 522232 blogarate.com

THe middle column is rank according to Feb08 Quantcast data. This puts us in 3rd and 18th places. No matter how you cut it, Rapid Intelligence is one of Australia's top independent publishers.

WHAT OUR USERS ARE SAYING
Wednesday 10th September 2008
Ryan O'Neil Seaton on Encyclopedia > Sunday shopping (8 hours 3 minutes 49 seconds ago) I have a group on facebook called "Pro Optional Sunday Trading Taskforce (POSTT)" which is dedicated to the opposition of Sunday Blue Laws and supports Sunday Shopping Choice.

(see http://groups.to/liberty)

(or see h t t p : // groups dot to (not "com") slash liberty
Ummm on China Profile > Religion (8 hours 41 minutes 21 seconds ago) ...
View More

VASTLY IMPROVED INTERNAL SEARCH
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Our undying mission is to make our stats as accessible as possible, no easy task when there's over 8000 of them.

So that's why we've recently been paying a lot of attention to search. We've just unveiled an update that finds what you're after, more quickly and more accurately than ever before.

It might look the same but inside it's much smarter. Give it a go! Top center of every page.

Feedback always welcome.

Luke.

FORUMS ARE BACK, BETTER NAVIGATION
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Our forums are now back online. Apologies to our regular users for both the initial deluge and the resulting downtime. And to new users, we again have a place for discussing global issues and asking the advice of your fellow NMers.

Also, we're recognising that as the site grows, it's getting harder to get to your stats. So we've been making some changes. Some of these have already gone live like showing the top 20 stats in categories. That's the default but we're not walking away from our mission of being the one-stop shop for stats. By clicking the "All" tab you can still get the full list.

Luke.

TIME SERIES DATA AND MAJOR UPDATE
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
After much hard work, we can announce one of our biggest ever new features; literally a whole new dimension for NationMaster.

Now you can walk back in time.

Here's how it works. Take a newly updated stat like number of telephone subscribers.

1. Select a year from the drop down box and the variable for that year. This shows all countries for the given year.

2. Click on the "..." to the right of the date for a particular country name. This brings up the country's value for the stat over time eg look at the growth in telephone subscribers over time in China. Or check out the growth in personal computers in the United States.

This is only available for newly added stats but there's certainly a lot of them to digest. We hope you like them.

CIA UPDATE
Monday, 16 April 2007
Our original source, The CIA World Factbook, has just been updated to the 15th March version. We've changed our technology so we'll be keeping up to date faster and more often. Look out, we have hundreds of stats from another major source coming soon.

DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE THIRD WORLD
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
We get a lot of letters expressing surprise here at NationMaster. The real world is far more complex than what our preconceived notions would have us believe. For example, the third world isn't one big block of large families and poor health. It's easy in the west to overlook the massive amount of development that has taken place in Asia, well beyond Japan. In this lecture, Hans Roslong, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm, gives a graphical and entertaining summary of how the world has changed in the past 40 years. Highly recommended viewing.

WE'RE SITE OF THE WEEK
Monday, 18 December 2006
Respected US education magazine, District Administration has just made StateMaster its Web Site of the Week. We're chuffed here at Rapid.

A big stat update is on the way soon, by the way. This is for both NationMaster and StateMaster.

NATIONMASTER ON SEARCHENGINEWATCH
Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Mary Ellen Bates just gave us a nice review of NationMaster at SearchEngineWatch.

As researchers and information professionals are called upon to provide not just information but intelligence, NationMaster.com is a great resource for gaining new insights from the available information.

She mentioned StateMaster too, which was nice.

I look forward to seeing what the traffic looks like. I remember a few years back we got a flood of email asking quite a range of detailed questions about our sources, then checked our stats to see we'd been on the front page of conspiracy site, Rense.com. :)

NOW OVER 1,000 STATS!
Tuesday, 28 November 2006
Once we were big. Now we're really big. We've just introduced a whole raft of new variables including:

# A new category: Internet including LiveJournal users and Linux web servers.
# Exports to the USA for all kinds of agricultural produce from mushrooms to mangoes.
# In addition to per capita, you can now view many stats per dollar of GDP.
# Updates for all stats we get from the CIA World Factbook (now December 2003).

From now on there will be more regular stat updates, so keep coming back!

TRADE, POPULATION, AND ENERGY; OVER 1,000 NEW STATS!
Tuesday, 28 November 2006
In our latest addition you'll notice a massive surplus in statistics on trade and commerce. Dive right in to our wealth of information on imports and exports, everything from gem diamonds to tractors. Trade with the United States is highlighted here, with well over 200 of the latest statistics available. From which country does the US import most of its green coffee? Who is the largest recipient of US exports for musical intruments? World trade statistics are equally numerous in this newest update, everything from arts and antiques to zinc. Which country leads the world in passenger car exports? Is it true that Canada is the second largest importer of arms and ammunition? Our answers may surprise you!

Detailed statistics on population have also been added, so be sure to cruise through our age categories for both males and females. In particular, up-to-date information on annual rate of growth listed in percentages (with Afghanistan leading the way at an astonishing 4.8%) and births per 1,000 people (Niger is #1 at 51 births), may start more than one debate about the world's overpopulation.

The world's energy reserves are in focus as well, with around 50 key stats added. Critical information is at your fingertips, including oil barrels consumed daily, nuclear consumption rated on a scale of equivalent oil use, coal production, and hydroelectricity consumption in Terawatt-hours - all timely statistics essential toward understanding our ever-shrinking world. Get only the facts, and make the conclusions yourself!

PLAGIARISM ON WIKIPEDIA
Sunday, 5 November 2006
Wikipedia-Watch.org owner, Daniel Brandt has published a report showing widespread plagiarism in Wikipedia.

A more sophisticated methodology could be used here. One idea that has just hit me would be using archive.org and the Wikipedia history function to discover phrases that appeared on other sites first. This could be all automated.

But such activity should be applauded. Whatever people may speculate about Daniel Brandt's motives, the same thing could have been done by a Wikipedian with the same positive effect: as an open system that assimilates criticism, it will learn and evolve from negative press out there. And as a fast moving encyclopedia, it can react quickly to address the problem.

MONTENEGRO VOTES TO BECOME WORLD'S NEWEST STATE
Friday, 20 October 2006
Preliminary reports show Montenegrins have reached the 55% threshold required for seeking independence from the union of Serbia and Montenegro, moving one important step closer to becoming Europe's newest state. While many journalists around the world have dubbed this the final marker in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the status of Kosovo, a region within Serbia administered by the UN, has yet to be decided. But for now, it appears that the union between Yugoslavia's last two republics, on relatively solid footing throughout the 1990's, has all but been shattered. Critics of Montenegrin independence site the long historical and cultural ties between the two republics, and the damage secession will bring economically, socially and politically.

It has been some 90 years since Montenegro was its own country. Ruled by a string of dynasties and royal families over the centuries, Montenegro received international recognition at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. As World War I came to a close, the legislature of Montenegro voted to join the fledging state of Yugoslavia. Its political structure has been inextricably linked with Serbia ever since.

Many observers believe that what fueled this successful drive for independence is the desire for Montenegro to fully join the European and international community. Serbia's recent row with the EU and international observers over failing to capture fugitive General Ratko Mladic may have given a boost to the secession vote. The streets in the capital Podgorica were filled with waving red and gold of the former Montenegrin Monarchy (seen here), and with what appears to be a 86.3% voter turnout with all but 25,000 votes counted, it looks like the world will soon be welcoming the newest member to the international community.

UPDATED CIA DATA
Tuesday, 26 September 2006
We've just updated our CIA Factbook data on NationMaster once again with 236 stats added or updated. The big standout are terrorism stats spanning time periods back to 1968 and 2000.

We've also done some extra work with the data ourselves doing things like splitting up exchange rates by year, having a stat for each major religion (instead of listing them all together). This makes it easier to graph and compare nations, staying true to our mission.

Enjoy!

CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?
Thursday, 24 August 2006
Or "If I say something weird, will you leave me and never come back?"

A big issue with running stat sites is providing relevant, useful info that users understand while not cutting down what the users see until they can't question you.

On NationMaster and StateMaster, there are thousands of stats, so you're always confronted with contradictions. Figures seemingly don't make sense when you put them altogether. Our competitors like the CIA World Factbook have so few stats that inconsistencies can't arise. It's the easy option.

Our correlations feature wasn't as much of a hit as I'd hoped, because people looked at the data and said "wa? Murder rate correlates to gun ownership that makes sense. But look it correlates even more strongly to orange juice consumption!"

In a world without sites like NationMaster, we just leave it to experts to select which stats are most relevant. Of course an expert is by definition someone more knowledgable of the domain, so they will be able to digest the info more readily. But when more statistically significant figures are lying around and are not used, everyone should have access to them so they can ask why.

Now with SEO Sleuth, I chose to show every search going to every site. Now, any webmaster can tell you that people come to your site looking for pretty different things to what the site offers. And looking at the terms as a whole may give you a distorted view of what the site's about (but perhaps a good view of what parts of the site are of interest to searchers). But yeah, we're left with the same problem; people give a quick "that doesn't look right" and leave the site. One thing I considered was linking to the actual searches to prove it, but I didn't want to be republishing such sensitive data. So once again, the quandry.

AZZURRI CLAIM 4TH WORLD CUP TITLE
Friday, 28 July 2006
It certainly did live up to the hype of being the 64th game in the 2006 World Cup. With France and Italy knotted at 1-1, the match went into extra time, where the French captain Zinedine Zidane was sent off with a red card for head butting Marco Materazzi in the chest. It proved to be a death knell for France, as they went into penalty kicks without their leader, and lost 5-3.

NationMaster, in between matches, has been slowly keeping tally of statistics with an eye to compiling the most complete tables on World Cup history. You won't find these totals anywhere else on the net.

Total World Cup Points
Total World Cup Wins
Total World Cup Draws
Total World Cup Losses
Total World Cup Goals Scored
Total World Cup Goals Against
Total World Cup Matches Played

Enjoy our new World Cup totals, and see you in 2010!

SMASHING THE 400 STAT BARRIER
Thursday, 8 June 2006
The world's biggest general stat site just got much bigger! Information is spilling over into new categories - Energy, Education, Religion and Sports. Now you can find out how many jews, cars and olympic medals a country has. But new stats are cropping up everywhere. In People, we've got refugees and divorce rates. Economy has tourists and corruption. Military stats now include the number of army, navy and air force personnel. Geography now includes the largest city and its rainfall. Nearly 100 stats were added, so click around!

MONTENEGRO SAYS YES TO INDEPENDENCE
Monday, 22 May 2006
Preliminary reports show Montenegrins have reached the 55% threshold required for seeking independence from the union of Serbia and Montenegro, moving one important step closer to becoming Europe's newest state. While many journalists around the world have dubbed this the final marker in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the status of Kosovo, a region within Serbia administered by the UN, has yet to be decided. But for now, it appears that the union between Yugoslavia's last two republics, on relatively solid footing throughout the 1990's, has all but shattered. Critics of Montenegrin independence site the long historical and cultural ties between the two republics, and the damage secession will bring economically, socially and politically.

It has been some 90 years since Montenegro was its own country. Ruled by a string of dynasties and royal families over the centuries, Montenegro received international recognition at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. As World War I came to a close, the legislature of Montenegro voted to join the fledging state of Yugoslavia. Its political structure has been inextricably linked with Serbia ever since.

Many observers believe that what fueled this successful drive for independence is the desire for Montenegro to fully join the European and international community. Serbia's recent row with the EU and international observers over failing to capture fugitive General Ratko Mladic may have given a boost to the secession vote. The streets in the capital Podgorica were filled with waving red and gold of the former Montenegrin Monarchy (seen here), and with what appears to be a 86.3% voter turnout with all but 25,000 votes counted, it looks like the world will soon be welcoming the newest member to the international community.

AFGHANISTAN FACES WORST FIGHTING SINCE 2001
Thursday, 18 May 2006
Since NATO forces have moved into the southern regions of Afghanistan to re-focus efforts on battling Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in the country's most lawless region, attacks on troops and casualties have increased dramatically. The fighting has largely been in the Helmand province and around the city of Kandahar, the traditional stronghold for the Taliban. A suicide bomb was also unleashed yesterday in the western city of Herat, which is still considered one of the most peaceful urban centers in the country. Suicide bomb attacks have increased sharply this year, with 20 reported incidences so far, compared to 17 for the whole of 2005, and just 5 in 2004. The United Kingdom is leading the mission in Helmand, and plans to increase NATO's International Security Assistance Force from 9,000 to 21,000 by November this year.

To give you a better grip on the breaking news, NationMaster has just updated casualty statistics for Afghanistan, as well as new development aid statistics for the country:

Afghan Coalition Fatalities
Total Development Aid to Afghanistan, latest estimates
Percent of Development Aid Going to Afghanistan

Check back in with NationMaster for more essential data on the latest news and breaking stories.

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION STUDY RELEASED
Wednesday, 26 April 2006
Just two days ago, the Brookings Institution released 'Iraq Index - Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq', a revealing study which gives data analysis on a wide range of issues on the ground. The study shows that some $1.8 billion has already been spent on the electric sector (with $300 million spent by the Department of Defense on Restore Iraqi Electricty - RIE) yet in Baghdad, the average hours of electricity per day has dwindled to 4 in April 2006. One year ago the Baghdad average was 11.5 hours of electricity each day. The study also shows that the Iraqi security forces on duty have risen to 250,000 in March 2006, with a stated target of 275,000.

Polling data also gives some insight into Iraq, with 49% of the Iraqi population agreeing that 'Iraq today is generally headed in the right direction', opposed to 36% who believed it was the wrong direction (November 30-December 7, 2005). To the question 'what three issues or concerns do you feel most impact your daily life or family' most respondents focused on security, corruption and unemployment, though only 4% thought ethnic/religious tension was serious enough to be on the list (November 2005). In October and November last year, when asked whether the US was right to invade Iraq, 80% of Kurds polled responded yes, 58% of Shiites and 16% of Sunnis agreed, and the Baghdad area hovered around the national average of 46% (Time-ABC News Poll).

In light of this release, NationMaster has updated statistics on Iraq:

Iraq Pledges of Reconstruction Aid
Troop Strength of Iraqi Coalition Forces

You can find the whole report by the Brookings Institution here.

STATEMASTER.COM - TWIN PROJECT OF NATIONMASTER
Thursday, 13 April 2006
Since NationMaster.com exploded onto the scene some three years ago, there have been faint voices in our minds that have grown louder as the critical success of the world's largest stat database for comparing countries was affirmed over and over again. That voice said something simple but powerful: 'you can do more with this formula'. So early on, we focused our sights on US states.

It frankly surprised us that with such a tremendous amount of complete and timely data emanating from US governmental agencies, NGO's, and research institutes that a project of compiling all of this data into one easy-to-use database had not yet been undertaken. Perhaps we were missing something; perhaps no one cares about statistics on the percentage of African Americans in the Army, or the number of inmates executed by the electric chair in Florida, or what New York's expenditure is for elementary and secondary education. But the more we talked about the possibilities of StateMaster.com, the more folks around us became excited as well. It was apparent that the web was missing something, not us.

So here are the fruits of our labor: StateMaster.com, which is launched with 2,613 stats, hundreds of maps and flags, and our unique visualization technology which allows you to see critical data in new and revealing ways. But this is only the beginning. We will be adding new stats all the time, as well as new state information, maps and flags. So be sure to check back in with us, and if you are interested in helping us out with this project consider being a Volunteer Editor. From all of us here at StateMaster and NationMaster, thank you for your tremendous support!

STATEMASTER, SISTER SITE TO NATIONMASTER, IS LAUNCHED TODAY
Tuesday, 11 April 2006
StateMaster, a free online resource for comparing US states, has been released today. We have translated our winning formula of statistical comparisons, graphs, maps and flags to the 50 states of America, giving our users another level of data at their fingertips. With over 2,500 stats on StateMaster, you can find information on anything from binge drinkers to p>race related hate crimes.

Detailed state profiles, as well as thousands of maps and flags, are also included in the database, making us a one-stop resource for information about US states.

Visit StateMaster Now!

Keep in mind that our Volunteer Editor program will also be implemented for StateMaster, bringing together a community of folks interested in data and general information on US states. Let us know if you are interested!

EXCLUSIVE COLOMBIAN CRIME REPORT NOW AVAILABLE
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
The Colombian Crime Report for 2005 has just been released this week, and we have exclusive access to this document here on NationMaster. Though this report is not yet available anywhere else, in two weeks time the full Spanish version will be published on the Head Criminological Investigation Center website of the Colombian National Police, according to Lieutenant Colonel Wilson Barón Calderón.

Download the Complete Colombian Crime Report for 2005 Here

The document highlights several facets of crime which have reportedly been on the decrease in recent years, most importantly homicide rates, which have reached their lowest levels in the past 24 years. The report goes on to explain that "in 1981, the same rate of 2005 was recorded. However, the total number of cases reached 10,805 and the population at that time was of 29,080,0000 inhabitants. While the Colombian population grew 58%, the homicides rate remained constant." According to the report, the Colombian National Police have also been credited with an 18% reduction in traffic injuries and a 55% reduction in kidnapping.

This report underscores the changing political and security environment in Colombia, a society that has been gripped by high levels of violence for decades. On March 11th this year, some 2,000 rightwing paramilitaries laid down their weapons and joined the peace process, according to the BBC. Most Colombians agree, however, that paramilitary groups will never be fully eradicated, and some human rights organizations are concerned that the peace process might mean some groups who have committed atrocities will go unpunished. It does seem, at least for now, that the Colombian National Police are cracking down on crime in the country. Just last week, the BBC reported that $540 million worth of cocaine was seized in Cartagena, which comes less than a year after 15 tons of cocaine with an estimated value of $3 billion was seized in the country, which is by some accounts the largest single drug haul ever.

BIRD FLU STRENGTHENS GRIP ON EUROPE
Saturday, 25 February 2006
France has now confirmed cases of avian influenza at a French turkey farm in the department of Ain. This will be the first case of bird flu striking a poultry farm in France if it is confirmed. The French farming ministry has said that cases of bird flu were suspected after a high rate of death among turkeys at a farm in Versailleux. Wild birds in Slovakia have also been found to contain the H5N1 strain, the first instance of avian flu in the country.

The news comes two days after EU officials have announced plans to vaccinate millions of birds against avian flu in France and the Netherlands, two of Europe's largest poultry suppliers. If the highly lethal avian flu type A, known as H5N1, begins to mutate, it could wreak havoc on the human population. There is however, no conclusive sign that the strain can pass from one human to another.

NationMaster has just published updated bird flu statistics in an effort to keep you up-to-date on the bird flu crisis. The report filed on February 23rd by the World Organisation for Animal Health lists confirmed cases of avian influenza over the past month (from January 23rd to February 23rd).

cas>View our statistic on recent avian flu outbreaks.

Also available on NationMaster, we have up-to-date cases of avian flu effecting humans, with cas>confirmed human cases and dea>confirmed human deaths.

Stay on top of changing events with NationMaster.com, and consider joining our community of Editors if you want to be a part of a growing educational resource which seeks to provide free essential information to millions around the globe.

NATIONMASTER TOOLBAR NOW AVAILABLE FOR MOZILLA AND INTERNET EXPLORER
Tuesday, 17 January 2006
Do you want country profile information and the latest statistics available to you at a single click of a mouse? Do you want to search any text you highlight, view web site rankings instantly and block those pesky pop-ups? Then download our free NationMaster Toolbar for Mozilla/Firefox and Internet Explorer and stay on top of an ever-chaging world!

Go directly to the Toolbar Download Page

This Toolbar is located on your browser, and gives you instant access to NationMaster's database. For those of you who downloaded our previous plug-in (see the previous news blog), this new Toolbar gives you even more functionality, increasing the quality and speed of your research, and making your general surfing experience more informative and enjoyable. Search NationMaster's database by simply typing your query into the search field, but perhaps our favorite feature is the 'search highlight' function, which allows you to highlight any text on any web page, right click your mouse, and search the NationMaster database for that keyword. You can also click on the NationMaster icon to go directly to statistical category pages, or view country profiles of major countries. The Toolbar also gives you instant site rankings for all websites and blocks pop-ups on Internet Explorer. Downloading the NationMaster Toolbar takes only a few brief moments.

Click here to install the NationMaster Toolbar for Mozilla/Firefox and Internet Explorer.

NATIONMASTER'S NEW GEOLAB
Thursday, 8 December 2005
Teachers: looking for online tests which will improve your students' geography skills? Try NationMaster's new GeoLab, designed by Professor Steven M. Graves of California State University. Using this GeoLab, students follow directions for navigating NationMaster's site, viewing specific graphs, maps, scatterplots and correlations and answering questions about the data. All major areas of our statistical database are covered. At the end of the lab, students will be able to formulate their own correlation hypothesis, outlining a strong or weak correlation between two statistical variables and testing that hypothesis using Nationmaster's correlation technology. Students can then submit his/her GeoLab results directly to their teachers e-mail address. We hope to add more GeoLabs in the future, so check back in with us regularly!

Click here to see NationMaster's new GeoLab!

NATIONMASTER UNVEILS NEW REDESIGN...
Tuesday, 8 November 2005
We've spent many days redesigning our pages, and you can now witness the fruits of our labor: a new bold look for NationMaster! Our hope is to add to the functionality of our site, making it easier to navigate and more entertaining to use. Our search functions are updated and streamlined, making your stat search that much easier and quicker, giving you access to our database in mere seconds!

As you may well be aware, this new look follows on the heels of our decision to make the entire site free for all users. With this new redesign, when you are viewing a certain statistic, correlations and graphing tools are more easily accessible: with just a click of a button you can view up-to-date information with our unique visualization technology. Feel free to let us know if our redesign makes your researching and stat surfing more user-friendly.

Our redesign not only effects your ability to use our site; it also includes new behind-the-scenes technology that allows us to update our database more quickly and easily. This technology upgrade translates into more time-sensitive information at your fingertips, existing stats getting even more frequent updates, and new stats added at the drop of a hat. The ball is rolling at NationMaster: evermore relevant, evermore accurate, and getting larger all the time!

In other news, we've just made a NationMaster search engine plug-in for Mozilla-based browsers. This allows you to search NationMaster pages no matter what website you happen to be on, an excellent search function located on your toolbar.

NATIONMASTER ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING EDUCATIONAL SITES!
Wednesday, 2 November 2005
Nielsen NetRatings has acknowledged NationMaster.com as one of the fastest growing educational websites on the internet, with a unique audience of over 1 million American users for the month of September!

And of course, it would have never been possible without our loyal fans. Everyone here at NationMaster would like to thank you for making us an indispensable internet resource! Be sure to give us plenty of feedback: what works, what doesn't, why there aren't more statistics on popsicle choking or off shore oil rigs. We read all our mail, and your reactions are important to NationMaster's continuing mission of being the one source for all your by-country statistical needs!

NATIONMASTER.COM BECOMES ENTIRELY FREE!
Tuesday, 1 November 2005
Today the world's most popular online statistics database becomes entirely free!

At NationMaster, we've always prided ourselves on being a largely free service – journalists come here for information about stories, net-users link to us to prove arguments in chat rooms, and stat buffs from all over the world come just to sift through the endlessly interesting statistics – all for free. But special functions – such as pie charts, scatterplots, and correlations graphs – have traditionally been reserved as rewards for those who chose to give a little bit extra to support the site.

Until today.

Now the entire site is free. For the first time, anyone in the world can generate pie charts, scatterplots, and correlations graphs for just about any statistic. And the results are amazing – even if we do say so ourselves! Want a pie chart showing which countries make up the greatest percentage of total world arms exports? Need to know what the correlation is between mobile phone use and women’s rights? Just try it out – we're sure you’ll be astonished at what you find.

Luke Metcalfe, founder of the site, explains the reasoning behind the shift:

"Because of all the support we've received over the past few years, we've reached a point where the site is financially self-sustaining. Rather than give ourselves a pay rise, we've decided it's a good time to give something back. Not enough people have been getting access to some of NationMaster's most amazing features. Now everyone can use all the site, all the time."

To use any of the newly free features, just adjust the "View" entry in the green NationMaster "Make Your Own Graph" toolbar. By default, it reads "Map & Graph / Table". Simply click on the arrow beside it, and select "Scatterplot", "Pie Chart", or "Correlations" from the drop-down box. Then select the statistics you want to compare. It's that easy!

Lastly, a word to our loyal supporters – from all of us here at NationMaster, thank you. Without your generous support, we would never have arrived where we are today – ready to give the whole world free access to the entire site.

Once again, everyone here at NationMaster extends a big thanks to all our supporters! Enjoy the newly free features!

NATIONMASTER MAKES AVAILABLE CORRELATING TOOLS ON COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Tuesday, 1 November 2005
Budapest, Hungary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NationMaster Makes Available Correlating Tools on Countries of the World

NationMaster.com, the world’s largest online statistical database for country comparisons, has today announced free access to their correlation tools. This service allows the user to compare any two statistics (out of a database of over 5,700) in order to shed new light on information highly-useful to journalists, writers, professors and the general public. Correlations can therefore be used to inform debates on crime, politics, education, poverty and so on.

“We’ve seen NationMaster quoted in thousands of online debates,” says John Steinmetz, Content Manager for NationMaster, “and it’s true that statistics can be dangerous; they can be used to justify anything. We actually found a blogger using NationMaster’s information to prove that there is a link between child poverty and the number of television sets in a country. It then occurred to us, why not develop a technology that would allow our users to take any two statistics from our database and compare them, revealing hidden statistical relationships.”

Using NationMaster’s correlations, strong links can be found between:
• A large number of prisoners in a country and high teenage pregnancy.
• A high external debt of a country and a large population of elderly.
• A large population of couples with children and a high number of McDonalds in a country.

Rather than NationMaster.com coming to conclusions about a given set of data, these applications allow users to develop their own comparisons and, in effect, arrive at their own assumptions and conclusions. “Never has such a tool been applied to so much data, and available to so many people,” Steinmetz says, “we are trying to start a statistics revolution. We want to give people access to information, and make it fun and interesting. We think there’s something intriguing about Malaysia having the lowest rate of cinema attendance in the world, or Iceland having twice as many tractors per capita than any other country. These correlations take it to another level, bringing to surface a lot of questions that are never asked, some bizarre and entertaining, others enlightening and speaking volumes about our world.”

This free correlations tool is just the latest in a series of statistical visualization technologies, which includes scatterplots and mapping applications. The website offers users a database on thousands of statistics in categories such as health, government, identification, mortality and people, as well as providing general country information, maps and flags, lesson plans for teachers, forums, and a student area. It was recently listed by NielsenNet ratings as one of the top ten fastest growing educational reference sites, viewed by over 1 million Americans last month.

FROM THE MAKERS OF NATIONMASTER - FACTBITES!
Sunday, 10 April 2005
What do you get if you cross a search engine with an encyclopedia? The answer arrived on the net today - Factbites (www.Factbites.com), a new approach to search. Under the slogan "where results make sense", Factbites provides searchers with full sentences about their search topic, rather than the sentence fragments most search engines offer.

Rather than focusing on link-based technology like Google, Factbites delves into the tone and subject matter of the given topic. The engine "reads" the content of each page and determines how meaningful the text is. It seeks out authoritative and informative content, preferring encyclopedia-style fact-based descriptions to the chatty, spammy and inconsequential.

The end result is a clean summary you can almost read from beginning to end. Not only is this an effective filter against spam and clutter, it's also a time saver, because it gives users a clear picture of what each destination site is about. For encyclopedia-style content, the site makes some large claims. The website challenges users to compare Factbites results to Google results at Factbites vs. Google. When searching for quick information on the sort of things you'd usually go to an encyclopedia for, the results are surprisingly clear - Factbites wins hands down. Don't take our word for it, check the site yourself - Factbites!

275 NEW STATS, SUPPORTER IMPROVEMENTS
Tuesday, 14 December 2004
NationMaster has exploded once again with 275 new variables. There are some really interesting ones here. For example:

* Military - aircraft, artillery, tank and helicopter holdings in Europe, as well as overall weapons holdings
* Economy - McDonalds restaurants and child poverty.
* Education - hugely expanded including literacy levels in maths, reading and science. Interesting also is how many children are reading comics and novels.
* Energy - you can now track oil production from 1972 to today .
* Health - check out the incidence of breast cancer and overall cancer deaths.
* Labor - strikes and working mothers
* People - teenage birth rates, one person households, Nobel prize laureates

Also newly created Agriculture and Manufacturing categories allow you to compare countries based on what they produce.

You can also now sign up as a supporter using your regular credit card and be taking advantage of our premium features immediately. No PayPal accounts required. We are also offering group license discounts for educational and non-profit organizations. Support your favorite stat site today!

CORRELATIONS ARE HERE
Thursday, 12 February 2004
You can now request the top correlated variables for every variable on the site, using our standard form (at the top of the page in green). It's under "view:".

The results have been fascinating:

* The best indicators of innovation and technological achievement is GDP per capita, edging out the number of R&D personnel and time in education.
* Corrupt countries tend to lack technology.
* Countries where young women work te
nd to have a lot of old women working as well.
* Secondary school enrollment is inversely proportionate to the proportion of population under 14. The plot shows no outliers.
* The best predictor of motor vehicles per capita is the country's wealth back in 1973. Newly rich countries don't buy cars quite as much?
* Gender development is the best predictor all up. Better than GDP per capita and population. It's much better than the most predictive measure of the difference between rich and poor.

You will notice that scatterplots look nicer now countries can be represented by their flags.

Every country now has population pyramids spanning a number of years.

OUR BIGGEST EVER UPGRADE!
Saturday, 18 October 2003
If you thought we'd been slowing down over the last 6 weeks, you'd be wrong. We have a whole raft of new features - too many to mention. But here are the main ones:

* Better visualization

o _y=eco_tec_ach&size=eco_gdp>Scatterplots showing the relationship between any two stats you care to name. *
o Pie charts showing proportions. *
o Printable versions of all graphs. *
o Our color-coded maps now have legends explaining what the colors mean.

* Encyclopedia improvements

o Encyclopedia main page accessible from the top menu.
o Greater integration into country profiles, giving you towns, famous people, administrative area descriptions, history and much more.
o Pictures accompanying articles.
o Better formatting.

The items marked with an asterisk (*) are available only to supporters, but by clicking on them you get a taste of what they're about. And subscriptions are probably cheaper than you think. Help us keep NationMaster running!

IMPROVED SEARCH
Monday, 22 September 2003
Our search facility is now greatly improved. You can search across the whole site including graphs, country profiles and encyclopedia entries. Stay tuned - there are some big new features in the works.

HOMELAND HIGHLIGHTING
Friday, 5 September 2003
NationMaster now detects your country and makes it bold on all graphs it appears in. Our Democracy category now has respectable coverage including voter turnout for both presidential and parliamentary elections. We also now follow the number of transnational parents and affiliates.

ENCYCLOPEDIA IS HERE!
Saturday, 23 August 2003
We now have Wikipedia with over 150,000 entries! The entries are often very fresh and up to date. See for example the possible death of Saddam Hussein and SARS. Hyperlinks to it are blended into the site's content. As usual, we have more stats too, including suicide rates, DVD regions, local call costs, English speakers and flights.

GET TALKING IN OUR FORUMS
Monday, 18 August 2003
Has something you've read here got you thinking? Want to know more? Got an opinion? Now you can share it with other NationMaster users at our discussion forums. They're nicely categorised the same way we do stats on the site, so it should be easy to find your way around.

STAT MAPS ARE HERE!
Friday, 8 August 2003
Our stats are now even sexier with color-coded maps. All graph pages now come with these info-maps built in. It's interesting how often the shading changes gradually between neighbouring countries - check out forested land and AIDS for example. You can click on the continents to zoom in. Then move your mouse over individual countries to see their name. Clicking then brings up their profiles. We'll be tinkering with this feature in weeks to come so be sure to send in your comments. We also have a new category - Labor which is quite interesting.

NATIONMASTER - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Thursday, 26 June 2003
NationMaster now lets you look back in history with the popular GDP per capita stat for the years 1820, 1900, 1950 and 1973. You can also look ahead to 2050 with these projected population growth rates. There's now lots of smoking stats and we're building pretty comprehensive environmental and economic profiles of countries too. As you click around, you'll notice our related stats boxes are a little more lateral (read: automated). More interesting stuff to come!

Link to website: http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php