At the national level, governmental officials must manage a country’s economic, political, and social situations, among many other things. Further complicating their work is potential corruption, which can be defined in a multitude of ways. The non-governmental organization Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) defines corruption as “abuse of entrusted power for private gain.”

The index, which has been published each year since 1995, ranks countries around the world by perceived corruption in the public sector. Many countries rank low in corruption, including Denmark, New Zealand, and Finland. However, many more are riddled with corrupt politicians according to the CPI, such as South Sudan, Syria, and Somalia as you can find on the map below.

View Countries by corruption in a full screen map

The Most Corrupt Countries in Africa and Asia

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of government corruption. A score of 0 indicates the most corrupt country, while a CPI of 99 means little corruption.

The 123 countries that scored between 0 and 49 in 2021 are therefore perceived as more corrupt. Yet while a score of 49 isn’t something to be proud of, it’s nothing compared to some of the absolute lowest-rated countries that you’ll see on the table below or when you group the map by the lowest 2021 Scores (“17 – 11” and “28 – 19”).

Nation or Territory	2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
South Sudan	11
Somalia	13
Syria	13
Venezuela	14
Afghanistan	16
North Korea	16
Yemen	16
Equatorial Guinea	17
Libya	17
Burundi	19
Turkmenistan	19

The table above shows the 11 most corrupt countries, according to the CPI. Of these, South Sudan is the worst. In 2012, it was reported that South Sudanese politicians had stolen $4 billion in government funds since the advent of self-rule in 2005. That said, South Sudan is hardly the only African country worth calling out. Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and Burundi also rank high in corruption.

The rest of the table consists of mostly Asian countries, with Syria being the most corrupt of these. Syria is followed by Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, and Turkmenistan on the CPI. This leaves Venezuela, the only South American country to make the list.

But of course, the world’s not all corrupt, thanks to those on the other end of the spectrum.

10 of the Least Corrupt Nordic Countries

South Sudan, Syria, and 121 other countries may have had CPIs of 0-49 in 2021 but there are 56 countries in the 50-99 range. Though there are far fewer of these non-corrupt countries, you can see the top of these on the list below.

• Denmark (88) CPI
• New Zealand (88)
• Finland (88)
• Singapore (85)
• Sweden (85)
• Norway (85)
• Switzerland (84)
• Netherlands (82)
• Luxembourg (81)
• Germany (80)

Including Denmark and Finland, 40% of the 10 least corrupt countries in the world are Nordic. Sweden and Norway are the other two Nordic countries with the same high CPI score (85 for both).

Expanding to continents, 8 out of 10 are in Europe. The Nordic countries are included in this, all four ranking higher than any of the other European countries in the top 10: Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Meanwhile, New Zealand and Singapore round out the top 10 in Oceania and Asia, respectively. Singapore’s inclusion is perhaps the most notable, considering many of the most corrupt countries we discussed in the previous section were located on the same continent.

If you’re wondering where the U.S. falls, it has a CPI of 67, which, interestingly enough, is a six-point fall from 2012. Let’s dive more into these changes next.

View Changes in Chart Form

As for changes through the years, you can sort the map by “10-Year Change: 2012-2021.” But it’s one thing to look at a snapshot—and another to see how it changed: all at once or gradually.

This is where charts come in handy, which we created using our inline charts tutorial. Now let’s take a look at the largest changes.

Seychelles, a collection of over 100 islands in the Indian Ocean, has the largest positive change (and largest overall change). In 2012, it had a CPI of 52, just narrowly missing the cutoff for corrupt countries. In 2021, Seychelles has a score of 70, ranking among the top X best. The largest change year-to-year was in 2017, as noted in its inline chart.

Meanwhile, the largest negative change belongs to Saint Lucia. Back in 2012, the island nation‘s CPI was 71. Throughout the years (and especially in 2017 when it dropped by five), it has fallen by 15, now standing at 56.

For detailed instructions on adding inline charts to your maps, check out our post about it. You can also see the charts in action in Where U.S. Beer is Brewed.

Research by Scientific American shows that humans are not very good at estimating distances. Luckily, we have computers to help us much of the time, such as our vehicle’s GPS or driving directions on a website. It’s only natural that you’d also want to use these with your own custom locations. These distance calculations can be important in many cases, from sales and customer visits to deliveries. One error could mean a lot of time, not to mention money, wasted.

Instead of calculating distance manually or relying on scientifically proven poor estimates, use tools that take out all of the guesswork.

Let’s go over one such tool, our mapping software, which has multiple ways of determining the distance between your points, starting with point selection.

1. Select Your Points

Let’s start by selecting the locations on your map that you want to calculate the distance between. If you don’t already have a map, here’s how to prepare the data of your choice for our copy-and-paste mapping tool.

There are multiple ways you can select your points, including:

• Selecting rows on a table via Data View
• Using Advanced Mode’s selection tool shapes:
  • Rectangle
  • Circle
  • Polygon

Right-click (or hold control and click on Mac) any BatchGeo map to bring up additional ways of viewing (i.e. Data View) along with other options. If you’re a BatchGeo Pro user, among these is Advanced Mode.

You can use either Data View or Advanced Mode to select your points for distance calculations.

Advanced Mode will reveal even more selection tools in the upper left-hand corner of your map (the Rectangle, Circle, and Polygon selection tool). Choose a shape and then draw it to capture your points.

Depending on which of the distance calculation tools you want to use, you’ll select one or two groups of points.

2. Calculate Distances Multiple Ways

With our points selected, we can now move on to using our various distance calculation tools: Match Closest Pairs, Match New Selection, and the multi-distance tool.

Match Closest Pairs

Once you select your points, you’ll see options near the bottom of your map. Choose Match Closest Pairs if you wish to use only your currently selected points. Then, pick from one of the following options that pop up:

Calculate Least Distance goes through each point and finds its nearest point that hasn’t already been selected. You end up with pairs that are near each other. Odd numbers of points will leave one out.

Calculate Closest Neighbor goes through each point and finds its nearest point overall. There will likely be duplicates, but you know each place’s nearest other place.

Finally, Calculate Closest Unique Neighbor goes through each point and finds its nearest point. If there’s a duplicate, it favors the closest. In the end, you have the closest distances that don’t repeat any locations.

Note that each of these options will add a new column to the “Data View” of your map, displaying the distance between each of the points involved.

Though Match Closest Pairs covers the most common use cases, there are still other ways you can calculate distances.

Match New Selection

There’s a second distance calculation choice when you’ve selected your points: Match New Selection. This option brings up the same sub-prompts as Match Closest Pairs.

However, instead of only selecting an initial group of points, when you’re using Match New Selection, you’ll select a second group to compare to the first.

How to Match New Selection:

1. Select your first group
2. Click Match New Selection
3. Select a second group
4. Choose one of the three options (Calculate Least Distance, Calculate Closest Neighbor, Calculate Closest Unique Neighbor).

Without a second group of points, you won’t be able to select one of the sub-prompts, as you can see here:

Once you’ve selected a second group, you’ll see the familiar prompts from which you can choose (i.e. Calculate Least Distance)

While the options work the same, Match New Selection always looks to connect each point in the first group with a point in the second group.

These two methods of matching locations with distances can help you make sense of many points at once. The final distance calculation method is useful when you’re looking for answers about a smaller number of points.

Marker Measure Tool

The Marker Measure Tool is another Advanced Mode feature, though it lives in the upper left-hand corner of your map under Measuring tools.

There’s no pre-selection needed with this tool. Just click it and then drag the pin on top of the location, which could be a current marker on your map or not, you want to know the distance of from the rest of your points.

Map Your Data to Determine Distance

View Mechanics: Sales in a full screen map

You can calculate distances in completely customizable ways—all when you follow the steps to map your data with our tool.

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
3. Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
4. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
5. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Set Options”
6. Click “Map Your Data” and you’re done!

Start calculating the distance between your points today at batchgeo.com.

Maps in these modern times have become more than just the thing you keep in your glovebox for emergencies. They’re part of daily life on our phones, in our cars, and embedded in websites. Routes between places is a common use case for Google Maps and similar directional tools. However, it’s not possible to load all your customers, for example, into a single Google Map without a bunch of code. Nor can you easily import today’s deliveries and jump in the car—not without a lot of manual address typing.

BatchGeo’s custom maps take your spreadsheet data and transform them into visual representations that can be filtered and browsed in multiple ways. In this post, we’ll show how BatchGeo Pro enables route optimization with up to 25 locations. This all starts with gathering the data for your map.

Determine the Stops for Your Route

Before you can optimally map your route… you’ll need to figure out where you need to go. You likely already have these locations in a spreadsheet, such as Excel, Google Sheets, or a similar system. For example, perhaps you have a sales CRM or other customer database. Simply export into a CSV or other spreadsheet format:

Be sure to separate each piece of data into individual columns and include headers. For example, for a sales trip, you might have:

• Business
• Business contact
• Total sales
• Address
• City
• State

Each business location represents a stop on your route. It’s fine if your map has more than the stops you want to route—you’ll have a chance to select the locations before routing. But first, let’s map your data.

Make a Map of Your Stops

View Sales Route in a full screen map

There are a bunch of ways to make a map: ArcGIS and other desktop GIS software, Google Maps API, along with web-based mapping tools. Our Excel mapping tool can copy-paste directly from your spreadsheets.

1. In your spreadsheet, select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
2. Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
3. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
4. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Set Options”
5. Click “Map Your Data” and watch as the geocoder turns your location data into coordinates

The resulting map is customizable, allowing you to adjust your map marker color, shape, map style, and more.

Create a map of a single day’s visits or go ahead and put all your customers on a single map. It’s possible through our map data visualization you’ll see new stories within your customer base. But first, let’s plan your customer or prospect visits and optimally map the route between two or more markers.

Optimally Map Your Route Between Points

Depending on your data, there may be times when you have two (or more!) points near each other. You might then wonder about the best way to navigate between them. So let’s take a look at the best way to get from Point A to Point B.

Upon right-clicking your map, BatchGeo Pro users will see both a “Data View” option and that of “Advanced Mode.”

If you turn on “Data View”, press the ⇧ Shift key and select the locations you wish to map a route between from the table below your map.

Clicking on “Advanced Mode” will reveal more selection tools in the upper left-hand corner of your map (including a digital measuring tape. For route optimization, you’ll want to opt for the Rectangle selection tool (or one of the two other selection options: Circle selection tool or Polygon selection tool). Then, capture two or more points on the map using one of the selection tools.

For both methods, you’ll now want to click Optimal Route in the lower left-hand corner of your map.

Next, you’ll want to choose your starting and ending locations. You can either choose to “Use First Selected Waypoint” for the “Starting Location” or manually enter any other location, regardless of whether it’s already a marker on your map. The same goes for your “Ending Location.”

Finally, click Map Optimal Route.

The result is a visual depiction of the best route between two points, plus the ability to hit the Navigate button to be taken to Google Maps directions.

Discover the optimal routes between your own data at batchgeo.com.