Chart assignment
Charts to read and discuss
Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.
Chart 1 of 2 · Medical research
How much has NIH's Alzheimer's research funding grown?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
NIH funded $2.99 billion of research on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias in fiscal 2025, 5.8 times the $518 million in 2015, the first year of this NIH category; Congress raised Alzheimer's funding almost every year from 2016. These are totals of the projects listed in RePORTER, so they differ somewhat from NIH's published category estimates.
Questions to discuss
- In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
- Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
- Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?
Source: NIH RePORTER (National Institutes of Health), Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Sep 30, 2025
Open the chart and its numbersChart 2 of 2 · World
How much carbon dioxide does each country emit per person?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
In 2024, people in the United States emitted 13.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide each, in China 9.3 and in India 2.2, against 4.7 worldwide. The highest figure was 82.8 tonnes in Palau, then Qatar (47.3) and Bahrain (23.9). Search 203 countries and territories. The figures count carbon dioxide from burning fuel, industry and other sources, but not from changes in land use such as cutting forests; in a small country, a few power plants, refineries or fuel sales spread over few people can make the figure very high.
How to read this chart
Each bar is the carbon dioxide a country put into the air in a year, divided by its population, in tonnes per person. The dashed line is the world. A country can emit a lot in total but little per person if it has many people, and a tiny country with a refinery or power plant can top the list.
Questions to discuss
- Compare the United States, China and India. Which emits the most per person, and is that the one that emits the most in total?
- Why might some small countries have the highest figures on the chart?
- Which seems fairer for comparing countries' share of the blame for climate change, total emissions or emissions per person? Why?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions excluding LULUCF per capita (t CO2e/capita) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024
Open the chart and its numbersTeachers: make your own chart assignment, or change this one. Free, no account needed.