How to create a country comparison

Country comparisons can provide important insights into how a country develops in comparison to other countries. In a country comparison, it is easy to see how a country performs in an international comparison.

With the help of a country comparison, you can place a subject in an overall context.

Choose the right comparison value

In order for a country comparison to make sense, there are a number of things to consider. For example, it does not help to examine the absolute GDP between Germany and Luxembourg. Germany will always be ahead, as it has considerably more inhabitants. Instead, you have to look for metrics that are more comparable. In this case, GDP per capita is a good choice.

GDP per capita - OECD Countries

Create a country comparison

AllThatStats was specifically designed to make a country comparison. Let's stick to the GDP/head example.

  1. We use the search "gdp per capita germany luxembourg"
  2. We select a database that suits us best for our comparison, in this case "Main GDP Aggregates per Capita" from Eurostat.
  3. Add all countries that should participate in this comparison to the selection.
  4. Under "Motion" tab we select the Column Chart and with the option "rank items" we sort the countries by size.
Employees in the Iron and Steel Industry

How to handle missing data points

If some data is missing for the time you are looking for, then the functions "interpolate missing values" or "forecast time series" can be helpful. For example, if the Luxembourg data is missing for the current period, it may be sufficient to replace it with the penultimate period. forecast -> Constant -> latest periodicity

Video Workflow