Hans Rosling speaking at TED on “Asia’s rise — how and when” humbly accepted that Indian students were better in the world. He says “Once upon a time, at the age of 24, I was a student at St. John’s Medical College in Bangalore. I was a guest student during one month of a public health course. And that changed my mindset forever.
The course was good, but it was not the course content in itself that changed the mindset. It was the brutal realization, the first morning, that the Indian students were better than me.”
Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force.
At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US.
In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development—with some surprisingly good news—snaps into sharp focus.
Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster’s flair.
Rosling developed the breakthrough software behind his visualizations through his nonprofit Gapminder, founded with his son and daughter-in-law. The free software — which can be loaded with any data — was purchased by Google in March 2007.
