Graphs can tell us our history. At Amazon, small hiccups in our graphs would serve as a funny reminder of a bad deployment or a broken feature, but in the real world they can sometimes be a sobering reminder of history we would rather forget.

I was playing around with Google’s Public Data Explorer some time back. It is a pretty interesting tool that lets us visualize and compare all kinds of fun historical data/estimates. Looking at hiccups in these graphs can draw interesting questions (like why did Somalia have a sudden spike in population growth in the late 70s?).

But sudden drops on population graphs (like the ones below) serve as chilling reminders of the death and displacement that results from genocide and civil war.

Population history of Rwanda 

See: Rwandan Genocide (1994)

Population history of Bosnia

See: Bosnian War (1992-1995)

Population history of Cambodia

See: Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975-1979)

If you like data and history, I suggest you check out the Public Data Explorer. Let me know if you see anything interesting (or can answer the Somalian question above).