Brief Explanation of the Geography Lab #

Version January 20, 2015

The Geography Lab allows to pick a set of countries and up to three properties to prepare a report showing for each property a ranked table of the countries chosen.

Conversely, you can pick all properties you are interested in and up to three countries and compare countries on the basis of the properties shown.

A simple example is shown below:

Note that both in Total Area and Total renewable water resources Germany ranks before Austria and Switzerland. However, Germany is almost 3 times larger than Austria but has only twice as much renewable water resources; and Switzerland is half the size of Austria, yet has about 3/4 of renewable water resources when compared to Austria.

Observe that some properties do not allow a meaningful ranking, like internet code of country (in which case the listing is done alphabetically by code) or year of independence (in which case countries are sorted by date of indpendence: this concept does not apply to some countries, and yields null or shows the date when the status of the country changed: like 1918 for Austria, although the larger Austrian monarchy had existed for a long time; or 1871 for Germany, when the many smaller parts of Germany where first united into a nation Germany.)

This is the first version of our lab. Further features and further properties will be added in the future, and interesting visualizations will be provided. In the meantime, any feedback to office nospam@TUGraz.at @global-geography.org is appreciated.

Back to the lab