Teachers guide and students material

A card game with The Gapminder World Map

About this lesson Level: secondary school. Subjects: history, geography & social studies. What you need: only this document. Outline: The students will try to arrange country cards in an order that illustrates the gaps in the world today. They then compare their arrangement with the Gapminder World Map graph.

About this document By Mattias Lindgren, the Gapminder Foundation, based on an idea by Paula Cooper. Version: 02/09/2010 This guide is available at: www.gapminder.org/downloads/card-game Cover photo by: Meeralee http://bit.ly/b9GLwv

License You are free to use and re-distribute this material for non-commercial purposes under a creative commons licence. We ask you to credit 1 as the source: www.gapminder.org

Key messages of the exercise

The exercise can help the students to think about the gaps in the world today and challenge preconceived ideas about how the contemporary world looks. The exercise can also be used to stimulate an interest in using statistics to understand the world.

How to do the exercise

1. Divide the class into groups with 3-5 students in each group. 2. Prepare the material. The following material will be used:
The country cards that are available for printing on page 3. Distribute one set of cards to each group. An ordinary world map, if you have one. This is not essential, but it could be good if the students can get a better sense of where in the world the countries on the cards are. The graph Gapminder World Map that is available for printing on page 4. Print one graph for each group, but dont distribute them yet.

About the data in the graph

The data in the Gapminder World graph has been compiled from a variety of sources. Data from high-income countries is mainly from registers, whereas surveys are a common source in low and middleincome countries. Such surveys are based on interviews with a representative sample of the population. Information about sources can be found at www.gapminder.org/worldmap. The uncertainty of the data varies, but there is a consensus regarding the general pattern. The graph uses what is known as a logscale, a scale which expands at low values and compresses at high values. The log scale gives a more correct picture when we look at incomes. For example, $100 extra per year makes a huge difference for a person earning $400. The same $100 addition might not even be noticed by someone earning a $100,000. Some middle-income countries, such as South Africa and Botswana, have a remarkably low life expectancy compared to other countries with the same incomes. The main reason for this is the AIDS epidemic, which has hit these countries particularly hard. HIV and AIDS affect rich and poor alike. The relative high incomes in these countries have been used to give treatment to some of those infected, but they have not yet been able to stop the transmission of the disease.

3. Ask the students to arrange the country cards according to the development level of the countries. You do not have to be more specific than this, let the students come up with their own ways of grouping the countries (e.g. they might sort them into two groups, several groups or arrange them into one line). 4. Ask them to explain how they arranged the cards. Does their way
of sorting the countries reflect what they think the incomes of the countries are? Health? Development, in a more vague sense?

5. Distribute the Gapminder World Map graph to the groups.

Explain the graph, i.e. that each bubble is a country, the size of the bubble is the population, the colour the continent, the Y-axis is the life expectancy (i.e. health) and the X-axis is income per person. Explain quickly what the two indicators mean.

6. Ask them to find and mark the countries on the graph. 7. Discuss whether there were any surprising results. Discuss whether the graph could be used to divide the countries of the world into different categories.
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China
Capital: Beijing Location: Eastern Asia

Bangladesh
Capital: Dhaka Location: Southern Asia

South Africa
Capital: Pretoria Location: Southern Africa

United States
Capital: Washington DC Location: North America

South Korea
Capital: Seoul Location: Eastern Asia

Mexico
Capital: Mexico City Location: Latin America

Brazil
Capital: Brasilia Location: Latin America

Ukraine
Capital: Kiev Location: Eastern Europe

India
Capital: New Delhi Location: Southern Asia

Dem. Rep. of the

Congo

Singapore
Capital: Singapore Location: South East Asia

Botswana
Capital: Gaborone Location: Southern Africa

Capital: Kinshasa Location: Central Africa

Ethiopia
Capital: Addis Ababa Location: Eastern Africa

Nigeria
Capital: Abuja Location: Western Africa

Japan
Capital: Tokyo Location: Eastern Asia

Russia
Capital: Moscow Location: Eastern Europe / Northern Asia

85

Lowincome countries

Middleincome countries

Highincome countries
Germany Italy Spain

Gapminder World Map 2010

Healthy Poor Sick
Tuvalu

Japan

France

80

75

Rich

Kosovo Nicaragua Micronesia Marshall Isl.

Vietnam
Palestine

Syria Sri Lanka

Cape Verde

China
Georgia
Maldives

Cuba
Albania Belize

Costa Rica

Chile

Puerto Rico

Israel Finland New Zealand 2 Malta 3

Philippines

Armenia Honduras Paraguay

70

Health Life expectancy at birth (years)

Nepal
Comoros

North Korea

Kyrgyzstan

Moldova

Indonesia
Uzbekistan

Vanuatu

DR Tonga El Jamaica Samoa Salvador Palau Morocco

ArgenOman Poland Bahrain tina Slovakia Venezuela Ecuador Macedonia4 Serbia Malaysia Antigua & Barbuda Libya Bahamas Tunisia Colo-5 Hungary Bulgaria mbia Algeria Peru St Kitts & N. Estonia Saudi Arabia Romania Jordan
Bosnia & H.

Uruguay Grenada Panama Dominica

Mexico

Barbados Croatia

Portugal

South UK Korea Greece Taiwan Czech Rep.

Slovenia

stein Netherlands LuxBel- Ireland embourg gium Austria Denmark Kuwait UAE Brunei

Sweden Hong Kong Andorra Iceland Switzerland Australia SingaCanada pore Norway 1

Liechten-

USA

Qatar

Brazil
6

Guatemala

65
Togo

Bangladesh
Myanmar
Benin Haiti

Tajikistan Laos So Tom & P.

Yemen Cambodia

India
Sudan

Paki- Solostan mon Isl.

Iraq
Mongolia

Fiji

Ukraine

Egypt

Azerbaijan Suriname

Iran Turkey

Latvia Seychelles LebaMauritiusnon Lithuania

Belarus

Trinidad & Tobago

Guyana

Thailand Kazakhstan

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Bolivia

Bhutan Turkmenistan Kiribati Namibia

Russia
Colour by region:

San Marino Monaco Cyprus Montenegro Saint Lucia St Vincent & Grenadines

Nauru

60

Eritrea Liberia

Madagascar Guinea Ethiopia Malawi Niger

TimorPapua Leste New Guinea

Gabon

Cte d'Ivoire Tanzania Uganda

55

Gambia

Mauritania Ghana Senegal Djibouti Kenya Congo, Rep.

Botswana

Size by population:
3 or less

Burkina Faso Cameroon Chad Zambia

10

100

50

Burundi

Somalia

Rwanda

South Africa

1000
millions

Gapminder World Chart 2010 Version May 2010b

Equatorial Guinea

Congo, DR Zimbabwe

Mozambique

Sierra Leone Central African Rep.

Guinea-Bissau

Mali

Nigeria
5 000

Angola
Swaziland

www.gapminder.org
http://www.gapminder.org/worldmap

Data are for 2009 for all 192 UN member states and the other 5 countries and territories with more than 1 million people (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Palestine, Puerto Rico and Kosovo). Free to copy, share and remix but attribute Gapminder. For sources see:

45

Afghanistan

Lesotho

Money GDP per person in US dollars (purchasing power adjusted) (log scale)

500

1 000

2 000

10 000

20 000

50 000