The BBC will broadcast an hour-long special next Tuesday called The Joy of Stats and it looks great. Hosted by Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, the show will use some beautiful computer generated graphics to demonstrate the importance of data and data visualization.
Unfortunately, the show is expected to be shown only in the UK, due to BBC licensing practices. (It’s on BBC 4, UK only.) That’s a real shame, because as is so amply demonstrated by the preview video of the show – statistics, data and data visualization are matters of global importance. As the world produces more and more data than ever before, every day, that will only grow more true.
Thanks to Nathan Yau, author of the great blog Flowing Data, for posting this video in the first place we saw it.
See also Rosling’s widely acclaimed TED Talk video and Emily Cunningham’s in-depth review of Gapminder’s DIY data desktop data visualization tool here at ReadWriteWeb from August.
I think this video also points to arguments similar to those I make in favor of aggregate social web user data being made available for programmatic access and analysis: data about our world offers new opportunities to unearth injustices, shine light on opportunities and gain a new level of social self-awareness. Let’s set that data free!
