Hans Rosling on data and the developing world
If there’s anyone or anything TED lectures were made for, its statistics guru Hans Rosling and his fabulous Gapminder charts. Rosling’s latest lecture at the U.S. State Department is up here. Rosling’s major thesis is that human beings in the developed world have made remarkable progress on several key measures. The more sophisticated point is that we too often conflate regions of the world as having similar characteristics, when in fact they are quite different (Yemen is an impoverished volatile country, yet it’s neighbor the United Arab Emirates is stable and prosperous).
Rosling’s clearly loves data. And he’s a very clear advocate for having governing bodies around the world open up and publicize the reams of data they collect on their citizens for independent analysis. This could be a very tangible realization the “Government 2.0″ movement — after all, the policy implications of Rosling’s datasets are enormous.