Political arithmetic: The Joy of Stats
The Joy of Stats with Hans Rosling is quite engaging — and worth watching. I really enjoyed the historical threads running through the piece. I think he’s right to emphasize how data collection by states — to understand and control their populations — is at the origin of statistics. With increasing data collection today, this is a powerful and necessary reminder of the range of ends to which data analysis can be put.
Like others, I found the scenes with Rosling behind a bubble plot made difficult by the distracting lights and windows in the background. And the ending — with analyzing “what it means to be human” — was a bit much for me. But a small complaint about a compelling view.
Fascinating… I had seen the three-minute segment from this, the one about longevity and wealth over two centuries… but I didn’t realize that it was part of a much longer film… I thoroughly enjoyed this… from Florence Nightengale’s work creating hand-made graphs of British army deaths that were so convincing to the most modern statistical views of astronomy, the environment, and happiness that use color and animation so effectively… I intend to share this with my students… thank you for the link…
Rosling has given many talks about global health. So this piece includes excerpts from a couple of those. Glad you enjoyed it.