Statistics Made Sexy!

Dear Commons Community,

Two colleagues of mine at Hunter, Jack Hammond and Manfred Kuechler, have posted on the Hunter Faculty LISTSERV on the topic of “Statistics Made Sexy” referencing the work of Hans Rosling.  Below are their postings with some very interesting links.

Tony

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At 09:01 PM 4/3/2011, Jack Hammond wrote:

The subject line a quote from Hans Rosling in the business section of today’s New York Times (Designers Make Data Much Easier to Digest, http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=rosling&srchst=cse ).  ,.

He is the creator of some fascinating statistical visualizations, not about statistics but using statistics to convey worldwide social change and international inequality on such things as wealth, health, education etc.  The visuals are fascinating and highly informative

Two of my favorites:
Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four (even if overly optimistic about the prospects for the least developed countries)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Asia’s rise — how and when

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiK5-oAaeUs

Jack

There have been several postings on the subject before the NYT finally took note, the latest thread was from this January (2011):
https://hunter.listserv.cuny.edu/scriptshc/wa-hc.exe?A2=ind1101C&L=HUNTER-L&P=R3924

The posting contains detailed links to all of Rosling’s work. For convenience, I restate the links:
Beyond the videos (a complete list is at http ://www.gapminder.org /videos/ ), the apps used in these videos is also available for interactive work both online and by downloading the whole app:
Gapminder World (or “Health and Wealth of Nations”) http://www.gapminder.org/world (for interactive online use)
Gapminder Desktop http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/
Gapminder USA (compare US states) http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-usa

M.

Manfred Kuechler
Hunter College

 

Burning the Koran – Riots in Afghanistan!

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past weekend, we saw the horrific rioting in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East in response to the burning of the Koran by Pastor Terry Jones in his church in Florida.  In addition to the burning, rioting, and anti-American chanting, at least twenty people have been killed and in some cases beheaded. The Sunday morning political commentators as well as elected political leaders were asking what we can do other than condemn the violence as the over-reaction of religious radicals to the actions of one cult pastor with a congregation of about thirty parishioners.    In this country, our freedom of speech protects everyone to express their views as vile as they might be and in this case the burning of the Koran but we must also understand that parts of the rest of the world do not necessarily have or appreciate these same freedoms.   I think this raises the larger question of whether our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan (where the cultures are quite different) to build democracy with all its inherent freedoms can ever come to fruition.  The actions of the past weekend suggest that we cannot.

Tony