Hans Rosling: Myth Buster On The Web

WHEN KNOWLEDGE SHEDS LIGHT

“…few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to listen to the music to understand how beautiful it is. But often that’s how we present statistics; we just show the notes we don’t play the music. It’s an enormous force when we animate our statistics and we put it free on the net.” — HANS ROSLING

Hans Rosling has started to make sense of world developments through time by improving use of statistics. He started Gapminder, a non-profit IT company that is co-owned by the Karolinska Institutet (KI), a medical university in Stockholm, Sweden.

Gapminder produces software that turns boring development statistics into attractive and understandable moving graphics. It was developed in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nation’s Statistical Division with funding from the Swedish government.

What is amazing about Rosling’s software is that it converts digital numeric time series into interactive animations of countries as bubbles that move with time in a scattergram.

Going through tons of data and information is, for many, a boring task that only trained statisticians relish in order to derive some meaning from sets of often unrelated information. What Hans Rosling and his group have done is amazing to say the least. He has brought data to life and has made what is seemingly impossible possible.

Using statistics, Hans has showed people what is possible in our world in an animated way. He has become a master of displaying information in appropriate formats that now give context, meaning and insight. It is statistics organised to make a simple point in a very visual, dramatic and memorable way.

Now why is this important to us? It matters how one displays data and we all know that data and information in the wrong hands can end up deluding people. A swallow does not a summer make just in the same way that a snapshot cannot explain an entire movie’s story from beginning to end.

Take a case in point regarding poverty, a global issue wanting a solution which has hounded humanity for hundreds of generations. In a video, Rosling reveals new insights and manages to bust a few myths along the way. And that’s just one issue he’s tackled among many others.

This new approach to making sense of things around us using statistics in a more intelligent and animated way gives us all a refreshing look into our future as a species. Ideas lead to innovation and Rosling has taken just one of these and developed it into a remarkable tool for humankind to use for a better understanding of itself.

Gapminder is registered as a Foundation. It does not award any grants. It is an operating foundation that provides services as defined by its board, sometimes as collaborative projects with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations.

The initial activity of Gapminder was to continue development of the Trendalyzer software. This software unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics. The current version of Trendalyzer is available since March 2006 as Gapminder World, a web-service displaying time series of development statistics for all countries.

In March 2006 Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation and the team of developers who formerly worked for Gapminder has joined Google in California since April 2007.

Gapminder Foundation now fills the Trendalyzer with statistical content and uses the resulting animations to fulfill its aim by:

·   Making time series freely available in Gapminder World and Gapminder Countries.

·   Producing videos, Flash presentations and PDF charts showing major global development  

   trends with animated statistics and colorful graphics.

all with the intention of being a “fact tank” that promotes a fact-based world view. 

Watch Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html