Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor who worked in public health in Africa for many years and then for the U.N. developing and presenting world health statistics, died at 68 from cancer.
Rosling, with his 15' pointer, was widely known from his many edu-taining TED Talks beginning in 2006. His documentary “The Joy of Stats,” was first broadcast by the BBC in 2010. It was followed by “Don't Panic – The Truth About Population” in 2013 and “Don't Panic: How to End Poverty in 15 Years,” in 2015.
In pursuit of his goal to fight devasting ignorance about the world with a fact-based world-view that everyone can understand, he helped create unusual ways of presenting the voluminous data collected by the U.N.'s World Health Organization. He and his son founded the Gapminder organization as an entity to create innovative presentation methods as well as ways to analyze and compress the massive amounts of data available. Rosling's son, Ola Rosling, built the Trendalyzer software to animate data compiled by the UN and the World Bank that helped Hans explain the world with moving, interactive graphics.
We are all educators in our own ways, in our own worlds, whether it's robotics, engineering or world population. And we can all learn from Goslings passion to present facts in an understandable way. Seeing people grasp and understand what you are saying is enlightening for all parties involved. I'm sorry and saddened by Gosling's passing but hope that you'll spend some time watching his passionate and informing documentaries and TED Talks… and forward them on to your friends and family.
You can find many of his videos on YouTube and Gapminder. Here's his longest and most informative:
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