Hans Rosling: Animated about statistics

doi:10.1136/bmj.b2801

Published 21 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2801
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2801

Feature

Profile

Hans Rosling: Animated about statistics

Geoff Watts, freelance journalist

¹ London

geoff@scileg.freeserve.co.uk

Hans Rosling’s efforts to make health statistics understandablehave also found a way to make them fun. Geoff Watts talks tohim about his work

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

On my computer screen I’m about to view a short presentationdownloaded from YouTube.¹ It’s about the history of lifeexpectancy in relation to income. I click on play, and the titlegives way to the face of a middle aged man with short brownhair and glasses, clearly being recorded by a camera mountedon his desktop computer. This image occupies the top left handcorner of my screen; the rest is taken up with a striking graphicfeaturing variously coloured blobs and dots of different sizes.The man begins to speak. The accent is Nordic. "It was the last200 years that changed the world. I will show you . . ." Hiseyes flick from the camera down to his computer screen as hemoves its cursor (and mine). In less than five minutes he vividlyillustrates two centuries of global change.