Rosling Defeats Big Data

In Hans Rosling's TED talk – delivered February 2006 (and often on similar themes since) – Rosling seems to recognize that, within complex data, there exists a need to display those data graphically and understandably. He attempts that while presenting in a “... hyperactive presentation style, something akin to Peter O’Sullevan commentating on the Grand National” according to Edwin Smith in a November 2013 Telegraph UK article.

Despite his enthusiasm and charm, we must ask the question: is Rosling presenting meaningful and understandable information and using the graphic elements to support his statistical thesis, or are the data used as the “... foundation for explorations of visual excess and irrelevance” as Joel Katz discusses in Designing Information?

In a struggle to present ideas sensitive to both audience and context, while supporting an agenda-driven position, Rosling does manage to provide clarity within a complex dataset – a difficult feat when considering the immensity of data he’s working with. And, certainly, Rosling does have an agenda and even states that: “the improvement of the world must be highly contextualized.”

It may even be, within that agenda, that he finds a nexus with Katz’s position that the audience may be unable to understand those data for several reasons, including lack of interest or lack of visual literacy. Those data, in the end, stand up better graphically than as pure numbers, and that is where Rosling finds his Rosetta Stone.

I believe Rosling finds a context within this medium to avoid those gaps articulated by Katz and successfully explains complex ideas in his highly graphical presentation.