So the link takes you to the mapping of the American Human Development Index. The AHDI basically measures the country's "wellbeing and opportunity." This rating is a composite of three scores: health, knowledge, and standard of living. Health is based on life expectancy, mortality rates, population numbers, etc. Knowledge is based on school enrollment and degree attainment. Standard of earning is median salary of America. All these data is from national statistics and surveys.
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Out of 10, the current AHDI is 5.17. The abysmal score is definitely regrettable, but the cool part about this is finding out why. That's where web design and awesome infographics come in.
Various listings that specify why something is scored also exist. For example, an interesting fact is that 75.4% of high school graduates in Mississippi enroll in college. This is the highest percentage in the country. (For reference, California has 56.1%). This high percentage is less impressive however when learning that only 60.5% of high schoolers in Mississippi actually graduate. Furthermore, of those college freshmen that were enrolled, only 19.4% of them will actually get a bachelor's degree. These numbers allow one to make a simple conjecture. Less than 2/3 of high schoolers in Mississippi graduate. Because of such a low number of high school graduates, colleges there will accept a very high percentage of these (most likely unqualified applicants. The majority of these freshmen will therefore be unprepared for college and most likely drop out. Thus, in Mississippi, only 19.4% of the population actually have a bachelor's degree.
I was impressed by this website because of the way it was designed. Boring statistics and facts would have never interested me the way I was by this website. Its brilliance is in making it so easily accessible to anyone.
Overall this website is again, very cool. Not only does it contain educational, income, and health statistics, it also has random information like homicide and burglary rankings. By States, congressional districts, and ethnicity are some of the choices available to compare this data. For example, it's interesting to see that Downtown San Jose will make a median income of about $37,000. While the highest in California is about $73,000. Where is this high income coming from? About a 20 min drive away, is Cupertino, Saratoga, and Los Gatos. As can be visually seen on the map, a 20 min drive separates two districts by about a 200% pay increase.
This website has good design behind it, something I've learned to appreciate in this class.
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