Prevalence | this thinking

This tree map represents the current popularity (or relative prevalence) of different terms in the research literature.

Some terms are much more prevalent than others, so it can be useful to filter them by their ranking. Otherwise, some of the rarest terms aren't visible at all (even if the pop-up information describes them).

The tree map uses data drawn from a recent five-year period (2020-2024), but how has the prevalence of these terms changed over time?

This chart represents the prevalence of different terms over the previous 50 years.

Again, some terms are much more prevalent than others, with critical thinking dominating the raw document counts. Selecting individual terms of interest permits them to be seen and compared. Alternatively, displaying the normalised proportions converts each trend line into a measure of how each term's current prevalence was reached (compared to the varying global publication rate). For example, contrast the recent rise to prominence of design thinking with the relatively flat curve for strategic thinking.

Having explored the current and historical prevalence of different terms, why not examine the meanings these terms have, or their relations to each other?