It's in the Data

This guy has a fantastic ability to make ordinary data seem extrordinary.



An interview with Hans Rosling from Wired...

Wired: Statistics tend to be very dry and uninteresting and yet you’ve made them so interesting.

HR: But they’re not uninteresting! I always show the [monthly] birth rate of Sweden and how you have this [spike] in March, which is exactly nine months after the midsummer eve [a holiday celebration in Sweden]. We’ve had it for 200 years. Then I ask everyone in the room to think about when their parents conceived and why did they do it at that time of the year. And [then I ask] are [people] happier who were conceived on midsummer’s eve than those who are conceived in October? People get excited about it.

Wired: Just how high is that birth spike?

HR: It’s about 30-40 percent higher. No midwife can ever take a holiday in March. We build our delivery wards to take the peak in March.