On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 came news that Hans Rosling passed away. As a doctor, teacher, statistician, and public speaker, he touched many lives, but, importantly, his presentations were what won him global acclaim.
Presentation Guild Advisory Board member Garr Reynolds published a blog post today about Dr. Rosling. Here’s a key excerpt:
“Almost eleven years ago, just after TED began experimenting with putting some of their talks on the web, I wrote this post called “If your idea is worth spreading, then presentation matters.” In that post, I summarized my impression of Dr. Rosling from his 2006 TED Talk:
‘Hans Rosling, an expert in public health from Sweden, does an amazing job in this presentation bringing the data to life. If you want to know how he did all those graphics, go to gapminder.org. It’s all there. Hans is saying the problem is not the data. The data is there. But it’s not accessible to most people for three reasons: (1) For researchers and journalists, teachers, etc. it is too expensive. (2) For the media, it is too difficult to access. (3) For the public, students, and policy makers, it is presented in a boring way. His solution is to make the data free, let it evoke and provoke an ‘aha’ experience, or a ‘wow!’ experience for the public. I loved the way he got involved with the data, virtually throwing himself into the screen. He got his point across, no question about it.’
From that point on, I watched virtually every talk he made and featured him in every book I wrote on presentation. I saw the professor in person at TED 2009 and was a fellow presenter with him at Tableau 2014 in Seattle where he, as usual, had the crowd of data geeks in the palm of his hand. If there is a Zen Master —or Jedi Master — of data visualization, then Dr. Hans Rosling is that master. His contributions are immense, and he will be missed deeply.”
Going forward, Garr writes, “Let us all remember Professor’s Rosling’s contributions and continue to keep the dream of a more fact-based, rational worldview alive.”
Indeed.
