Saturday, April 9, 2011

GDP and Latitude!

Apparently, there's some correlation between Latitude and GDP. I found out about this recently, and I don't think I've ever posted my results up here (potentially since the results were disheartening).

Anyways, it wasn't hard at all. It's a lot of data-pulling though: CountryData, CityData to get the results.

Method!

Make a Module so you can repeat this process several times for all the countries--I love how computers can be such assiduous workers. Macs are by far more reliable though, compared to PC's that can get corrupted or burn out easily. Anyways, I confess I digress; moving on!

In the Module, you'll want to access the "CapitalCity" and "Latitude" of the given country, as well as the "GDPPerCapita" of the desired country.

Following that, make a List with 'x' as "Latitude" and 'y' as "GDPPerCapita".

Now, you might also want to use Tooltip so that you can identify each point on a ListPlot by simply hovering your cursor over it! Fantastic stuff!

Run the Module through several times for all countries, filter (using Select to take only the countries with two valid numerical data in their coordinates).

As always, I didn't reveal my whole code, but just the underpinnings and if you really want to know the code I used, email me! I believe it's somewhere on my Blogger Profile.




The data isn't so exciting, huh. It's kind of parabolic, but still disheartening, in both results and the fact that the great majority of the world are of Nixon's "Silent Majority"--unable to raise their voices, oppressed, and stuck in a cycle of poverty. Most countries (more than half) are below even 15000 GDP Per Capita.