At the new documentation page you will find the documentation for the indicators compiled by Gapminder, including population. There you can also download an Excel-file that includes not only all the data, but also information on sources and estimation methods for each observation.
To the extent possible we have also used this information to give each observation one of these “data quality ratings”:
- Very Poor data quality – the population figure is based on guesstimates or rough extrapolations
- Poor data quality
- Fair data quality
- Good data quality
- Very Good data quality – the population figure is based on a rigourous census or equivalent
We have turned this rating into an indicator on its own, called “Data quality – population”. You find this indicator under “For advanced users” -> “Data quality”. However, this work has only just begun so most observations are still unrated.
You can use this indicator for the color of the bubbles, like in this example. The observations for which the population figure is highly uncertain will be red and the observations for which the population figure is more certain will be blue.
However, since most observations are still unrated most bubbles are still not colored in the example graph above. As we add more quality ratings in the future this information will become more useful.