21 November 2007 - 17:39The talk that got me into TED

I am going to start with my favorite talk, and add a post for each new talk as it comes up.

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

Official description-
“With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling uses an amazing new presentation tool, Gapminder, to debunk several myths about world development. Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life.”

My description-
This is the talk that got me interested in TED Talks. This is the kind of speaker that I want to be; when I get excited I talk a bit like him (excepting the Swedish accent), but I don’t have anything I’ve done that I could give a speech on.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Humor aside, statistics are supposed to reflect the world as it is, and not how it once was or how we expect it to be.
The best part of this talk is how it explains how our world perceptions are not necessarily wrong, merely 30 years out of date.
When we think of Vietnam we think of rice paddies and bicycles. Vietnam today is not the Vietnam of 1960, but rather the USA of 1960 when you compare childhood mortality, education and wealth, etc. It is the insights like this that statistics can make real.
You can download the Gapminder tools he used in the demonstration and replicate his talk in its entirety. Hans Rosling is now working for google, and has a second TED post where he outlines some of his newest statistics including C02 emissions and it’s correlation with GDP.