A Story with Statistics...what? what!

I was flying home from Chicago on Monday and had a huge layover in Atlanta (bummer!), and so naturally I needed to find something to kill time with. After wandering the A terminal I decided to buy this week's Economist (why not look smart while killing time?). I made my way through the magazine over lunch and landed on an article about Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor and researcher. It stopped me in my tracts. In fact, I nearly cried in my burrito.

He is a statistician and researcher and the article was about statistics technology and I was emotional about that? Weird, I know! I remembered that I'd seen a lecture of his a few years ago on Ted.org (stunning website that you must check out and watch at least weekly). I was so impressed with the way he made a story out of statistics. Plus, he is a really passionate person and who isn't inspired by passionate people?

I took statistics in both grad and undergrad and both classes terrified me...I don't really do math unless it involves easy calculations with a calculator. I understand words and their meanings, not formulas. I was saved only by my grad professor's ability to explain statistics a million different ways. Although I realize the importance of taking people, representing them with numbers, and compiling us all to be able to study the whole, I really didn't like it. I thought is was an artificial, cold way of looking at our equally as important, individual lives. Hans Rosling's visual representation of statistics in many ways tells stories of our lives, which seems to be a bit more human to me. Below I've attached his Ted.org presentation. It is amazing how you can see us and our ancestors moving around on that chart. It is our collective story and not just data analysis.



His next project is an attempt to use statistics and data visualizations to explain the entire world from 1800 to 2050...I, for one, can't wait!

Oh, one more thing that struck me in gate C8 about Hans Rosling...He went to Mozambique for the first time in the 1980s as a medical doctor where he used community resources and census data to help them solve this strange epidemic. Reflecting on that event, he said, "The epidemic humbled me, and so I became a researcher." I was thinking about us and wondering what things humble us to the point of action...