Debunking Myths About The Developing World Using Statistics

164 Views Sat, 09 Jun 2007 at 11:03 pm

This presentation below is a must see. Quite long, just a little bit over 20 minutes, but I was rooted to follow the presentation completely from the start to the end. Simply great.

So what can we learn from this? No, not that the Swedish professors are on par with chimps I was graduated from a Swedish university so I could assure you that they are really competent in their field, just like Prof. Hans Rosling (his blog, the wikipedia entry on him, his biography) from Karolinska Institute who was doing the presentation above (but my assurance only applies if you believe that I am way much better than chimps ).

Aside from the very good conclusions presented here, for me there are several points learned:

Statistic can really talk, BUT only if you can present it in the way so that the data can be easily understood. How many times did you put numbers that could only help the audiences losing their way? The next time you present data and numbers, always present them in the way so that they can talk by themselves.
For me, the presenter is great. He looks very confident (years of teaching experience must be very helpful here), he can convey his ideas clearly (supported by the awesome method for presenting the data), he seems to really understand what he is talking about and he can connect with the audience. Exactly the required recipe for great presentations. I should learn on how to do that in order to improve my presentation skill.

For you who missed the link when it was presented in the video above, to be able to play more with the data and tools used in the presentation, you could go here: http://www.gapminder.org/

Additional note: The presentation could also be followed here, in the website of TED conference (where the presentation was made).