Insights with Data – Hans Rosling

One of my favorite TED speeches (Why? His abilities to bring life, humour and storytelling to data). Brilliant graphic presentation of how both life expectancy and personal wealth have improved over the last 200 years but the gap between the richest and poorest nations has widened.

Rosling’s demonstration of the software at the 2006 TED conference was such a hit that organizers asked him back the following year, and the video of his TED presentation is one of the most popular the conference has posted on its web site. During his demo, as large and small bubbles representing countries raced across a chart showing their development over time, Rosling called out their positions like a horse race commentator defying audience expectations of where the bubbles would land. The demo raised questions about which countries could truly be considered developed.

The visualization tool is called GapMinder. Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

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