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 does NIH spend on opioid research?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
NIH funded $825 million of opioid research in fiscal 2025. The category began in fiscal 2018, when NIH launched its HEAL Initiative on addiction and pain partway through the year ($317 million); the most in a year was $947 million, in fiscal 2023. 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 fast has the world come online?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
73.6% of the world's people used the internet in 2025, up from 15.6% in 2005, the first year the World Bank gives a world figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months. The world figures are estimates by the International Telecommunication Union.
How to read this chart
Each point is the share of the world's people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months, as estimated by the International Telecommunication Union. The axis starts at zero, so the height shows the true share. The steeper the line, the faster people were coming online.
Questions to discuss
- About what share of the world was online in the first year on the chart, and in the latest year?
- Did the share grow faster in some years than others? What could have sped it up?
- Using the internet once in three months counts here. What does this number leave out about how people get online?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025
Open the chart and its numbersTeachers: make your own chart assignment, or change this one. Free, no account needed.