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General Methodology and Broad Principles

The methodology used on this portal is based on the technical note ‘MDG progress classification’, written by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in 2010 (see the PDF hereunder in the section ‘References’).

Year and percentage of completion

  • For each indicator from each goal, a target value is computed based on indicator level in 1990 (or on the first value observed since 1990).
  • Times series are extrapolated using a linear or quadratic econometric estimates, depending on the nature and frequency of the data. This methodology allows to find when the country will meet its target values for each indicator and the percentage of completion of each goal today.
  • The mdgTrack global index is the result of the mean average of each goal’s percentage of completion.
  • Country web charts represent percentages of completion of the 8 goals (resp. the 23 indicators for the detailled radar) and the widest is the area, the best is the country according to the completion of MDGs by 2015 or 2020. The web chart also shows as a benchmark the average position of the region that the selected country belongs to. Note that if no data is available, the associated percentage of completion is automatically set to 0%.
  • The motion chart presented in Indicators page crosses the MDGs’ indicator selected with an indicator of developpement, namely GDP per capita, from 1990 to date. The size of bubbles on the chart is by default proportional to country’s population.
  • The map.

Data collection
  • The whole portal relies on data from World Bank MDGs dataset (data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/millennium-development-indicators).
  • Several tools like bar graphs are automatically updated via an online connection to the World Bank MDGs dataset (API access).





References

  • Progress toward the MDGs, but much remains to be done
    World Bank, August 2010.
  • Millennium Development Goals
    World Bank, August 2010.




Third Party Technologies Used in the Portal

The mdgTrack web portal is using a combination of the following technologies:

  • JpGraph Library
    http://jpgraph.net
  • Highcharts Library
    http://www.highcharts.com/
  • Google Vizualisation API
    http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/interactive_charts.html