6 ms·

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

91 points by sthomps 16y ago

Indyan 16y ago
He gave a similar presentation at TED. It's a lot longer though.Check it out. -> Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... More stuff from Rosling: -> http://www.ted.com/search?q=hans+rosling http://www.ted.com/search?q=hans+rosling
- forza 16y ago
  In the documentary Swedish national television made about him, he says this regarding that TED video: "If I count the number of minutes I've been teaching, this video teaches more than anything I've done in my life. All the articles, books, courses... None of it can compare with this one video. That's a humbling experience." The documentary is now available on youtube, with English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7howQzatw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7howQzatw
- jh3 16y ago
  I knew I saw something like this before. Thanks for reminding me.
dmvaldman 16y ago
This data, and tons more, has been available through Google's public data explorer (http://www.google.com/publicdata/home http://www.google.com/publicdata/home) Albeit, without an enthusiastic British (Edit: Swedish!) guy's explanations...
- daliusd 16y ago
  Swedish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling)
chroma 16y ago
The original video link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo) was submitted 5 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315). Then a slightly different url (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jbkSRLYSojo#! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j...) was submitted 10 hours ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202) It seems quite unfair to me that the person who submitted this content first, and did so without linking to their own blog, gets none of the recognition and karma. While 100% of sthomps submissions (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sthomps http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sthomps) are links to his own blog, where he mirrors or links to the original content. I just said it (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974170) but I'll say it again: I think this is a flaw in HN's ranking scheme. If the original link isn't upvoted quickly, it never gets on the front page. After that, the rewards (recognition, traffic, and karma) go to people who mirror the original content or simply link to it from their own websites.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  How would you improve the ranking system?
  - chroma 16y ago
    I don't know of a complete fix, but a start would be to rank based on upvotes in the past hour (or 2 hours, or whatever works best) instead of since submission. This would allow links submitted days ago to end up on the front page if they were recently upvoted a lot. The new algorithm could be put on an alternate front page (similar to http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic) until it was tweaked to get the desired result. Since detection of duplicates and content mirrors is currently done best by humans, I think another aspect of the solution is cultural. If we want to stop this sort of thing, people need to point out mirroring/linking and flag submissions. If we do it enough, the incentives will change to discourage this behavior.
    - 16y ago
linhat 16y ago
His visualization reminds me A LOT about gapminder (http://www.gapminder.org/world/ http://www.gapminder.org/world/), if anyone wants to play with this kind of data with this kind of visualization.
- a-priori 16y ago
  Shouldn't be surprising since Hans Rosling (the guy in the video) co-founded Gapminder.
- lftl 16y ago
  You can also build pretty much the exact same visualization in Google's public data tool: http://tinyurl.com/2az8dm2 http://tinyurl.com/2az8dm2
gcb 16y ago
Income is not linear. So the disparity in income today is less evident. Thus helping paint the picture of a perfect future. That and the selection of medians for thing like income and life expectancy makes that a very poor data viz choice. But a very good motivational talk. Really Ted material...
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Income is not supposed to be linear. It makes it easier to see the relationship between log(income) and life expectancy visually.
nathanwdavis 16y ago
Nice use of sound effects too!!
tdok 16y ago
It's interesting that around the 70's the Asian countries (mostly China) spiked in life expectancy but still are at the same income level. There's a year where China's life expectancy just drop dramatically. I wish he had explained why.
- tdok 16y ago
  Just found out that it's the Great Chinese Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine)

91 points by sthomps 16y ago

He gave a similar presentation at TED. It's a lot longer though.Check it out. -> Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... More stuff from Rosling: -> http://www.ted.com/search?q=hans+rosling http://www.ted.com/search?q=hans+rosling

forza 16y ago
In the documentary Swedish national television made about him, he says this regarding that TED video: "If I count the number of minutes I've been teaching, this video teaches more than anything I've done in my life. All the articles, books, courses... None of it can compare with this one video. That's a humbling experience." The documentary is now available on youtube, with English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7howQzatw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7howQzatw
jh3 16y ago
I knew I saw something like this before. Thanks for reminding me.

dmvaldman 16y ago

This data, and tons more, has been available through Google's public data explorer (http://www.google.com/publicdata/home http://www.google.com/publicdata/home) Albeit, without an enthusiastic British (Edit: Swedish!) guy's explanations...

daliusd 16y ago
Swedish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling)

chroma 16y ago

The original video link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo) was submitted 5 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315). Then a slightly different url (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jbkSRLYSojo#! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j...) was submitted 10 hours ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202) It seems quite unfair to me that the person who submitted this content first, and did so without linking to their own blog, gets none of the recognition and karma. While 100% of sthomps submissions (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sthomps http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sthomps) are links to his own blog, where he mirrors or links to the original content. I just said it (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974170) but I'll say it again: I think this is a flaw in HN's ranking scheme. If the original link isn't upvoted quickly, it never gets on the front page. After that, the rewards (recognition, traffic, and karma) go to people who mirror the original content or simply link to it from their own websites.

mike-cardwell 16y ago
How would you improve the ranking system?
- chroma 16y ago
  I don't know of a complete fix, but a start would be to rank based on upvotes in the past hour (or 2 hours, or whatever works best) instead of since submission. This would allow links submitted days ago to end up on the front page if they were recently upvoted a lot. The new algorithm could be put on an alternate front page (similar to http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic) until it was tweaked to get the desired result. Since detection of duplicates and content mirrors is currently done best by humans, I think another aspect of the solution is cultural. If we want to stop this sort of thing, people need to point out mirroring/linking and flag submissions. If we do it enough, the incentives will change to discourage this behavior.
  - 16y ago

linhat 16y ago

His visualization reminds me A LOT about gapminder (http://www.gapminder.org/world/ http://www.gapminder.org/world/), if anyone wants to play with this kind of data with this kind of visualization.

a-priori 16y ago
Shouldn't be surprising since Hans Rosling (the guy in the video) co-founded Gapminder.
lftl 16y ago
You can also build pretty much the exact same visualization in Google's public data tool: http://tinyurl.com/2az8dm2 http://tinyurl.com/2az8dm2

gcb 16y ago

Income is not linear. So the disparity in income today is less evident. Thus helping paint the picture of a perfect future. That and the selection of medians for thing like income and life expectancy makes that a very poor data viz choice. But a very good motivational talk. Really Ted material...

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Income is not supposed to be linear. It makes it easier to see the relationship between log(income) and life expectancy visually.

nathanwdavis 16y ago

Nice use of sound effects too!!

tdok 16y ago

It's interesting that around the 70's the Asian countries (mostly China) spiked in life expectancy but still are at the same income level. There's a year where China's life expectancy just drop dramatically. I wish he had explained why.

tdok 16y ago
Just found out that it's the Great Chinese Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine)