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