Data speaks louder than words

In my International Political Economy class the other day we watched this video off of TED. It is of Hans Rosling, a researcher in Sweden, who has created this fabulous website: gapminder.org. This presentation was so interesting because of the way he uses graphics and data to change our conception of the developing world vs. the developed world. While there are several of his talks on TED, this one was a good starting point. If you want to see more, skip to about the middle of his 2009 presentation to see some new stats on aids, child mortality and his assessments of the "bottom billion."

At right you see a graph I made on gapminder.org comparing life expectancy and CO2 emissions. Click on it to go watch the video progress from the early 1800s onwards.