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Hans Rosling has died
- Entalpi 10y agoSad day for all of us who value a fact-based worldview in these dark days of rising nationalism and euroscepticism. Vila i frid, professor Rosling.
- fjdlwlv 10y agoPlease don't drag that into every unrelated thread
- TorKlingberg 10y agoHans Rosling was an outspoken proponent of globalization and specifically criticized the idea of a past when things were great.
- ska 10y agoWhile I think I can appreciate your sentiment in general (esp. technology) discussion, in this case it is really misplaced.
- jwtadvice 10y agoI want to be clear here: nationalism and euroskepticism are also fact-based worldviews. The difference between the worldviews are which facts are emphasized, shared and deemed culturally relevant. You can make pretty much any movie "based on a true story."
- abc_lisper 10y agoSad sad day! He seemed to have boundless energy in his talks, did not expect this...
- diegorbaquero 10y agoI will always remember his advocacy to teach, share and contribute knowledge. Amazing talks too. Sad and shocking day
- braymundo 10y agoA sad day, indeed. I will miss his creative and entertaining ways of showing how the world is getting better. Especially in these dark times.
- lentil_soup 10y agoSo sad, this guy was amazing and very enlightening in an era of misinformation. Check out his presentations: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_... (to showcase just one)
- milesf 10y agoAw man. What a loss! Hans is the guy that gave me eyes to see statistics as something beautiful and exciting. I still remember the first time I saw his TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...
- ianai 10y agoI truly hate cancer.
- afoot 10y agoA sad day indeed. One of his TED talks changed my career forever: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI saw him give a variant of this talk at Google, it was very powerful. The world has lost a great teacher.
- puzzle 10y agoHe actually had a green badge for a while. That's normally associated with interns, but it's also given to visiting scientists. Something about that was just funny. I only waved hello to him, but was very lucky to spend time with the Gapminder/Trendalyzer folks in B41 (his son Ola, Anna and Henrik), before they moved back to Stockholm. My thoughts go out to Ola and Anna. :-(
- curiousgal 10y agoCould you elaborate?
- rovr138 10y agoJust seeing his presentation here, the most I can take away for my career is presentation. The way data is presented means if the audience understands it and is interested versus simply saying good job and moving on.
- tigroferoce 10y agoEvery medicine student should watch that video to understand how much a proper presentation of data might change your vision about a subject.
- radicalbyte 10y agoSad day. RIP. For some context: Hans is famous here for his fantastic series of TED talks which cover population growth, poverty and development. Totally changed (well, confirmed) my world view. Start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg
- knz 10y agoGreat presentation, thanks for sharing it. Are there any others you recommend?
- radicalbyte 10y agoCheck the other ones posted in this thread :) I can also recommend the Planet Money podcast which covered tshirts. It changed my mind about the whole globalization and child labour story. The textile industry is the first step towards industrialization, and despite the abuses it's a net positive for humanity. More so when you consider the systemic pressure of the charities which work for better conditions. The only counter argument is global warming: development means more energy usage, which means more warming. Certain groups know this, and would prefer that 80% of the world's population live a Victorian lifestyle so we can keep enjoying ours. It's clear to me that if our generation can solve the energy problem then the driving factors behind most of the human-world problems go away.
- beambot 10y agoDo you happen to know which podcast in particular? A quick Google search revealed several. Was there a specific one featuring Rosling?
- radicalbyte 10y agoThis series: http://www.npr.org/series/248799434/planet-moneys-t-shirt-project http://www.npr.org/series/248799434/planet-moneys-t-shirt-pr... This episode goes into detail iirc: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/03/247360855/two-sisters-a-small-room-and-the-world-behind-a-t-shirt http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/03/247360855/two-s...
- bostand 10y agoThis is very sad. He could explain very complex issues in a way everyone could understand. Something that is need more than ever now in the age of fake news and alternative facts... RIP
- baxtr 10y agoWhat a sad day. I will miss his way of making facts really exciting
- widforss 10y agoProfessor Rosling is just the type of man we would need in todays political landscape. A character with a strong belief in verifiable facts and using those facts to change the world for the better.
- timClicks 10y agoAnd, almost more importantly, the creativity to think about how to communicate those facts to a large audience.
- agumonkey 10y agoIt is, we need a list of such persons, and entice them the spread the knowledge.
- VodkaHaze 10y agoImportantly, a very strong communicator of scientific work. His passion shined through in the videos he made, which any non-expert could understand.
- xenadu02 10y agoMy favorite video of his: A huge chunk of the women in the world spend a depressing amount of their time washing clothes. The washing machine has done more for women than anything else: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...
- soheil 10y agoThere was actually a guy in the washing machine, that just made me completely fall in love with that talk and I already liked it a lot.
- neogodless 10y agoActually a woman!
- hashhar 10y agoI find this [1] one quite amazing as well. 1: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...
- a_ight 10y agothat idea is an old idea predating Rosling, that the automation or labor-saving in the home and, more or less at the same time, women working in factories while the men fought WWII, was what led to women being recognized as "economically capable" and having a lot of free time as soon as they were done baby booming. Also, with the shifting and opening of roles for women, education of children plummeted because "teacher" used to be the most acceptable role for an educated woman, and quality dropped dramatically when the most talented women funelled into the economy to become scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc. It's a serious question, this is a real "technical debt" style tradeoff, and it's not a question of "pay teachers better" or "treat them differently", it's a quality question (this view is not popular within teachers' organizations)
- eru 10y ago
- melling 10y agoVery sad. Another victim of pancreatic cancer. A couple of months ago, astronaut Piers Sellers died from it. Ever since I heard Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture", I take notice when people die from pancreatic cancer, which a decade later, is still basically a death sentence. http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/ http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/
- gozur88 10y agoYeah, pancreatic, esophageal, anything with a "glio" prefix... time to get your affairs in order.
- masklinn 10y ago> I take notice when people die from pancreatic cancer, which a decade later, is still basically a death sentence. And that's unlikely to change given how late symptoms show and how benign they seem.
- kolinko 10y agoIt could change with easier screening methods.
- melling 10y ago...or you could find a way to detect it earlier. I'm not sure why you'd simply throw up your hands in defeat. It's not an unsolvable problem, just a difficult one. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206111912.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206111912.h...
- masklinn 10y ago> ...or you could find a way to detect it earlier. The problem of that method is the number of false positives, and that pancreatic isn't a hugely common cancer, just a really lethal one. > I'm not sure why you'd simply throw up your hands in defeat. Now what the bloody fuck are you talking about? Looking at the situation objectively is not "throwing up my hands in defeat".
- tomjen3 10y agoThis is on of his TED talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w Also fuck cancer.
- headconnect 10y agoTruly a great loss, but his style and enthusiasm will endure! I'll never forget the first time I watched him speed up the world..
- sixQuarks 10y agoWhy do so many good people die from terrible ailments, while the evil ones like Dick Cheney keep having dozens of heart attacks and keep ticking on?
- awicz 10y agoHans Rosling truly changed the way I view information, and the world. A great loss indeed.
- ak39 10y agoWhat a loss to humanity. This man's lectures and explanations of population growth epitomized hope for me. Empathy in motion! Heartfelt love and condolences to his family.
- bobowzki 10y agoVery sad news. He inspired me.
- mildlyclassic 10y agoGoodbye Hans. You will be sorely missed.
- VikingCoder 10y agoWell, let's not just assume that. Let's collect some data and see... :) Yes, I agree, he will be missed.
- manuelbieh 10y agoHad the honor to see a talk of him live at the TEDSalon in Berlin 2014. Very inspiring. Great loss. RIP Hans
- cicloid 10y agoWhat a loss! Seeing his TED talks did make an impact on me. He truly was an inspiring person.
- verytrivial 10y agoGoogle's cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8ws7tWbdZgAJ:https://www.gapminder.org/news/sad-to-announce-hans-rosling-passed-away-this-morning/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8ws7tWb...
- unixhero 10y agoI am filled with sadness about this.
- porker 10y agoSad news, his visualizations and approach to communication were the first to get me interested in this field.
- sleepychu 10y agoblack bar, please?
- btilly 10y agoMy favorite video of his is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo.
- neogodless 10y agoAlso my favorite - over 100 years of improvements in health and wealth.
- ekianjo 10y agoWow, that was a surprise. I remember seeing him on TV not too long ago, no idea he was already ill at that time... A sad day.
- tigroferoce 10y agoSad day. I will always remember his talks at TED. RIP.
- dorfsmay 10y agoFor me, he both made me discover TED and be disappointed with every other TED video! Who's going to carry on his amazing work now...
- robert_foss 10y ago:F A more inspiring and constructive individual I have never encountered. This is a loss with a larger impact than most.
- dandersh 10y agoAwful news. I just started getting into his work and will be sure to watch some of his TED talks this evening in his honor.
- Karlozkiller 10y agoI feel that the last round of attention Rosling got in Sweden gave the impression of a man determined to see ONLY good. But I do think this feeling got elevated by everyone else parroting uncritically everything he said taking it as the utter truth, and proof that anyone not thinking the exact same were crazy idiots. I guess it also connects to my aversion for simplification and fear of how easy some people seem to take anything at face value. That being said I do not think my thoughts above lessens his work. I have deep respect for his vision and what he strived to achieve.
- mongol 10y agoMy impression is he disappeared from the spotlight after a rise to fame. Never understood why. Maybe his illness? Or that some of his facts actually were inconvenient.
- simonbarker87 10y agoOut of interest which of his facts would be considered inconvenient? I'm familiar with his talks and work but only at a shallow level
- sorenjan 10y agoHe talked about how the gender balance in Swedish teens approached China's, because of the uneven immigration with a big male majority among immigrants aged 13-17. This was during a time when everyone that had anything critical to say about immigration was branded a racist by some in the media, and embraced as heroes by others. All he did was quote statistics. https://twitter.com/hansrosling/status/669678035654852608 https://twitter.com/hansrosling/status/669678035654852608 https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/669673779359064064 https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/669673779359064064
- Karlozkiller 10y agoYes, he was more or less discarded by the same people who previously hailed him as a 'God' when he was saying something positive about immigration. Interesting how people work sometimes.
- dsjoerg 10y agoThanks you, Hans, for your excellent & inspiring work. I salute you!
- johansch 10y agoWow. This was so unexpected. This hit me surprisingly hard. I guess I expected him to teach us about important misunderstood things for like 20 more years or so.
- equalarrow 10y agoYah, my thoughts exactly. Such a big loss for humanity. :( At least we have his son to carry on - there's still a lot of work to be done.
- yesbabyyes 10y agoMe and a friend participated in the Node Knockout 2011, we had decided to build a rap lyrics analytics engine and we called it Rapminder. The day before the hackathon started I ran into Hans Rosling right outside of our office and got his blessing. Serendipity. http://imgur.com/a/bATQn http://imgur.com/a/bATQn Rest in Power big homie. May the facts be with us.
- botswana99 10y agoVery sad. We need more like him to help us understand the true state of the world we live in today. And if you look at the data, like he did, the world is trending upward very well: A quick article: https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/ https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-bette... Hans Rosling's Gapminder website: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-end-poverty/ https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-end-poverty/ The Website 'Our World In Data': https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/ Some books that go into the world facts in detail: https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/814855168793554944 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/814855168793554944.
- CapTVK 10y agoMost readers only know him as a statistician, gapminder (which he founded) and the ted talks but he also had a medical background and was prepared to go straight to work during the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia. He called and jumped right in. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/star-statistician-hans-rosling-takes-ebola http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/star-statistician-han... "After he arrived in Monrovia, Rosling started by doing simple things, such as proofreading the ministry's epidemiological reports, which he says nobody had time for. He changed an important detail in the updates: Rather than listing "0 cases" for counties that had not reported any numbers—which could be misleading—he left them blank. Next, he tackled the problem behind the missing data. Some health care workers couldn't afford to call in their reports, because they were paying the phone charges themselves; Rosling set up a small fund to pay for scratch cards that gave them airtime." Rosling says he's tired of the portrayal of Africa as a continent of incompetence, superstition, and rampant corruption. “I am astonished how good people are that I work with here, how dedicated, how serious,” he says. When The New York Times reported that governmental infighting was hampering the Ebola response, Rosling tweeted: “Don McNeil misrepresents Liberia’s EBOLA-response to win the MOST INCORRECT ARTICLE ABOUT EBOLA AWARD.” His self-assurance and impatience with opinions he disagrees with can grate on others. “I find him quite irritating,” says one Western colleague. “Mostly because he turns out to be right about most things.” That last line is the ultimate compliment. He will be missed.
- agumonkey 10y agoThe view on Africa is doubly sad I believe, because it reinforces the psychological bias that African immigrants are worthless, coming from natural resource only places; which in turns I'm sure fuels the racism from Caucasians in Europe. Even if a French "hate" an English, he knows the two are similar and so cannot think himself above much.
- e40 10y agoPancreatic cancer has taken the majority of people I know that have died from cancer. A horrible way to go.
- kayoone 10y agoWow, I still have this tab open for weeks with an article about him that i wanted to read: http://www.nature.com/news/three-minutes-with-hans-rosling-will-change-your-mind-about-the-world-1.21143 http://www.nature.com/news/three-minutes-with-hans-rosling-w... Now hearing that he passed in the meantime is very sad indeed. What a great man.
- markshuttle 10y agoA man with a wonderful mix of wit, intellect and humanity, he will be missed.
- dodysw 10y agoThis person inspires me, very sad day.
- jpatel3 10y agoSad day :( His story is inspirational.
- wallzz 10y agoI remember meeting him in Algeria, where he gave a speak on various economic data of every country and the expected changes in the future with some focus on Africa, it was such an inspiring speech, he has a way to make the data come alive.
- synicalx 10y agoNow what're the chances of that... In all seriousness though, sorry to hear he passed. He's done a lot of good work and was still quite 'young'.
- mckoss 10y agoOne of great humans that will be missed by millions. It's a shock that he is no longer a part of our world.