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Charts & Statistics Screensavers

Economic and demographic statistics, drawn so you can watch them move: bar chart races of GDP, population and emissions, a heat map of inflation, a bubble chart of wealth and health, a Sankey diagram of the federal budget, 3D surfaces of yield curves and central-bank rates, and carousels that turn through dozens of measures. Free and fullscreen in your browser.

The GDP RaceSixty-five years of the world economy, overtaking itself. Open → The Population RaceEvery country's head count, 1960 to now. Open → The Emissions RaceWho put the most CO₂ in the air, year by year. Open → The Rate RaceThe highest central-bank rate in the world, month by month. Open → Wealth, Health and HeadcountEvery country as a bubble, 1960 to now. Open → The Inflation CarpetEvery country, every year, one colour per cell. Open → US Economy CarouselTwenty long series, each with its place in history. Open → The Country Stat WheelOne country, twenty-one measures, turning. Open → The Phillips LoopSeventy-eight years of unemployment against inflation, as one path. Open → The Yield SurfaceThirty-three years of the Treasury curve as terrain. Open → The Rate LandscapeThirty-eight central banks' policy rates as terrain. Open → Where the Federal Money GoesEvery dollar in, every dollar out — and the part that's borrowed. Open → The Age PyramidSixty-five years of one country's ages, bar by bar. Open → The Morphing WorldEvery country a circle, resized by what you measure. Open → Benford's Law, TestedDoes the first digit of real numbers really favour 1? Open → The Galton BoardBeads, pegs and coin flips, building a bell curve. Open → If the World Were 100 PeopleA hundred icons regroup into the world's real shares. Open → Zipf's Law, DrawnRank against size on log-log axes, and where the line breaks. Open →

Most data screensavers show you a number. These show you how it got there. The World Bank savers read decades of annual figures — GDP, population, life expectancy, inflation, CO₂ — for every country and animate them, while the interest-rate savers draw central-bank and Treasury data as races, terrain and a slowly turning path. US series come from FRED and the Bureau of Labor Statistics; central-bank rates come from the Bank for International Settlements.

Because the interesting part of a statistic is its history, the data is prepared ahead of time by the site's pipeline rather than fetched raw in your browser: it is faster, and it lets each chart say plainly where the data is thin, capped or missing instead of hiding it. Nothing here is investment advice; it is a window onto public data.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the data come from?
The World Bank's open data for country statistics, FRED (the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) for US series and Treasury yields, and the Bank for International Settlements for central-bank policy rates. All are free and key-less.
Is it live?
These are published statistics, mostly annual or monthly, refreshed whenever the site's data pipeline runs. They are current but not real-time feeds.
Do the charts hide anything?
They are built not to. Where a scale is capped, a series is missing years or a country is excluded for thin data, the chart or its page says so.
Is it free?
Yes — free, no download, in your browser.

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