Hans Rosling's answers to the TED and Reddit community interview

blog.ted.com Here, Hans Rosling answers the top 10 questions asked and voted on by the TED community through Reddit. See the original blog post here: blog.ted.com/2009/09/reddit_an... And see all the questions here: / ask_hans_rosling_ted_r... Look for similar community interviews in the next weeks!
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

[@SailorBarsoom]

Yeah, I definitely have a nerd crush on this guy.

[@Trazynn]

This is excellent! I would love to see a series of this. Hans is the best vlogger of KZbin.

[@spikesmth]

I grew up in Silicon Valley, it was a cruel trick played on me. All through school I was told I could make millions by starting a simple internet company, but a year before I finished HS, the bubble burst and even tech jobs/internships were hit and the dream was crushed. I've showed Gapminder to some of my professors, they've enjoyed it!

[@crudhousefull]

So few people have a more holistic view of life and the world than this gentleman. Mr. Rosling is one of the very very few people I respect in this world (that I've seen or hear from obviously lol).

[@nonchalantd]

I love this guy. He's so funny and well-intentioned.

[@WhiteTiger333]

Very, very cool! I've bookmarked gapminder - so much to explore. What a creative way to present global trends - thank you!

[@FanOfMilkyway]

Thank you Hans - for an interesting QA session! :-)

[@fredfarrell]

Fantastic! thankyou for answering all of those. You're an inspiration. I have passed your videos on to teachers that I know. Data Data Data!

[@Maxstate]

You are awesome, Mr. Rosling.

[@muzzleray]

Fantastic presentation, absolutely stunning, I enjoyed your TED lecture, but this is truly inspiring. I find it difficult even to get the admin folks of my world even to acknowledge things like KZbin or TED even exist. Never mind ever onwards. I imagine medical research for cancers and Multiple sclerosis and many more gaining greatly from the way things are presented in gap minder. and I still think you wrote it all code and everything, you're just being modest. many thumbs and koala stamps

[@libanlibanliban]

I love this guy and his stats!!!

[@marianopicco]

Hans uses Opera!! hell yeah :D Anyway, very interesting video as usual. I love this guy and the way he explains things, even if i'm studying something that has nothing to do with sociology and economics and trends...

[@Traffordsgoogle]

Hans, you are an inspirational guy, and a cool dude ;-).

[@guvenim]

@ 8:12 - 17:51 nice answer

[@amsunaakage]

To Hans Rosling : Thank you for this very nice video.

[@Samoaqueen]

He really likes that shirt :D

[@Radjehuty]

Thanks for clarifying for me. Yes I was referring to cultural homogeneity as that includes any racial variability in the definition. I also think it's an interesting point about our perceived inability to come to any consensus even within the culture itself. This is actually both an American strength as well as weakness. It has a knack for generating huge varieties of ideas, but also at the same time slow to implement. Kudos to both of you though :)

[@d3v07]

Awesome!

[@smerten]

Takk for fin video Hans!

[@nayeliruiz8098]

10 years have passed...

[@MrManas1995]

why wud anyone dislike this video?

[@descendantdan]

@axelasdf We face global problems, sovereignty is barley extant in a world where corporations have bigger balance sheets than governments, this is a fact we cannot change so we must adapt our modes of thinking to create new solutions. What we do need to do is a address the problem of the massive increase in population and have a unified response to global warming or as a civilization and maybe even a species our time will soon run out.

[@bajan13ken]

"let there be flash in schools" nice mantra.

[@mooktank]

Well life expectancy is not the ONLY metric for evaluating healthcare effectiveness. It is important and quite strange how much the US spends on its healthcare.

[@SpinyNormanDinsdale]

Finding the Google public data site is not as easy as typing "unemployment rate" in the Google search bar. For some reason I had to manually type the website for public data from this video in my address bar. Does anybody have an answer to why this is?

[@princeofexcess]

Another reason why healthcare is more expensive in USA is because of people suing. This increases the cost of the surgeries and costs for the hospitals. So person isnt getting better care but he has to pay for all the lawyers the hospital needs to get l8ter. This can be fixed with fixing the court system BUT not through changing the health care system.

[@Boognish64]

Does a statistics class actually exist in high-schools in the united states? In my high-school it went from Algebra 1 (or core math) to Geometry, and then if we wanted we could go on to Algebra 2 Trigonometry, then to pre-Cal. and AP Calculus (think AP calculus was taught at the university though).

[@doloppost]

Hans Rosling for president! :)

[@jacooney]

Yeah! Great Video!

[@doedicurus]

where does he get "total fertility" on the chart at gapminder? I can only find "child per woman" which only goes back to 1950.

[@Aliothemage]

Actually Switzerland's economy is more free then that of the US. They actually have the 4th freest economy according to the Frazer Institute's Economic Freedom of the World Report. It is in part due to this freedom that they are so successful.

[@grraadd]

technicalities...

[@KrisBotha]

Hans - Lets not get too gung-ho about commercially owned Flash, since the new HTML standard will achieve the same visual objectives of dynamic data presentation :)

[@RAZZLE69DAZZLE69]

to those people defending the US healthcare system. just look at the statistics for the percentage of people happy with their health service or theres one which shows the percentage of people who feel they have value for the money spent.imo, i dont think theres any excuse for the USA's healthcare status.

[@priceandpride]

Hans is hilarious. Keep making videos dude

[@princeofexcess]

higher w8ting period is a statistic... Google it if you dont believe me W8ting period comparison for care. Equipment and doctors is much harder to compare because data is harder to come across. However doctors in USA make 50 gran more then in canada. So if you want to make more and can get hired why not? countries that pay most to their employers usually have best employees my dad moved because he was good enough and could get payed more here then in US.

[@DSBrekus]

Yes but the issue is that all the extra money spent on healthcare in the U.S seems to not have a positive impact compared to countries that spend less and gain more.

[@DSBrekus]

I mean in the way that they are neighbours, they share many similarities I mean its the biggest friggin border in the world lol many canadians go to america and vice versa, they are different in many ways but the culture is more similiar then people may want to admit. I very much doubt canada has "worse doctors worse equipment and higher w8ting period then USA" Based on the fact that canadians apparently live longer it seems that perhaps it is more of a question of access then "quality".

[@fredfarrell]

isn't Medvedev more of a figurehead President though, with Prime Minister Putin running the show? Still, You're right in that he did get the title wrong.

[@Radjehuty]

I think the argument on health care spending correlated with life expectancy has some weaknesses. His data didn't portray the fact that Sweden is so much more homogeneous than the United States. Plus the United States has far more people and there's huge differences within the country. I think it's just too simplistic. Though I do agree our health care system is seriously flawed, that's not the point though.

[@mkarnerfors]

And which one of these things were revealed by an average Joe with the equivalent of a web page and KZbin videos?

[@dapnd]

the reason life expectancy is raised in emerging countries is simple - knowledge is easy to export.

[@axelasdf]

@descendantdan You don't realize that the global problems are individual problems. This will only come out of changing minds, not pointing the gun of governments at their people and each other.

[@timabad]

8:01

[@mkarnerfors]

A1: Conspiracies *may* exist, yes, agreed. A2: Your belief is that, and that alone: belief. You can believe whatever the heck you want as far as I'm concerned but belief is many steps away from proof and reality. Draw a very sharp line between what you *believe* and what you *know*. differ between reality and fantasy. never mix up the two. If you cannot or will not keep them separated, I suggest you seek professional help.

[@princeofexcess]

It seems and it doesnt is a separate thing. Imagine that survival rate in US for cancer is much higher then in other countries. however because people dont take care of themselves in USA most of them will get cancer while in other countries almost noone will get cancer. Which country will have higher life expectancy? Even if in other countries everybody that gets cancer will die and in US only 1/3 will still US can have lower life expectancy. It doesnt mean it has worse health care

[@mkarnerfors]

"Please dont respond as if you are so sure of yourself." Well look who's talking...

[@vatnidd]

1:03 Hu Jintao's last name is actually Hu...so Hu cares about China.

[@addicted2rpg]

International collaboration is good. World government is bad (yet one could easily lead to the other). If we had a world government and at some point it goes sour or tyrranical -- in our generation or another --, exactly where could one emmigrate to so they could get away from it? Leave the planet? Many difference places with many different systems, so that we can learn from eachother and celebrate our diversity is the way to go. I shudder to think of a central world gov.

[@MrHamncheez]

Wow, in retrospect that question about single payer healthcare seems quite dumb.

[@didate]

Good data, however, the population is in US is not as homogeneous as Switzerland's "pure breed", given the immigration stats and other factors, including it's multi-ethnicity. Huh? composition.

[@BinaryReader]

Dear playeren, CUDA will be useful in processing large data sets in parallel using modern dedicated compute hardware, CUDA has little to do with visualization, rather, it will be useful for producing the data. Visualizations are graphics specific, so Flash, Silverlight, GDI, WPF, DirectX, OpenGL and a myriad of other technologies will facilitate that.

[@martijnenco]

i think it's more somethinf like the mafia...

[@nazg55]

isn't it "prime minister" Putin?

[@grraadd]

he is using some government data saying that there is 9% unemployment rate, but the real unemployment in US is 17%..... plus small business waiting for better times (until they've got resources). funny guy

[@mkarnerfors]

Victim of Dunning-Kruger...

[@mkarnerfors]

Seriously... doesnt' it worry you that in 50, 60, 70 years... you'll be sitting at your retirement residence, thinking back about this time, at teh turn of the century, and ponder about how nutty you acted? Or will you be going "Oh they're still out there... they are nurse, I'm not crazy or senile! They are out there and have been for 100 years now! And only *I* know about it!"? Doesn't that worry you the least?

[@elboertjie]

I disagree with your first answer: we do not need a global governance, we need healthy independent states. What we see in the world now in forms of wars and sanctions is due to people forcing their agenda on other people.

[@Aussiemoo]

lol "sometimes you have to read books also, and not only reddit"

[@DSBrekus]

Meh, Canada has a similar lifestyle to the united states, and spends 9.8% compared to the U.S 15%. And for those who think that canada has worse healthcare, the graph shows that canadians live 2 years longer than americans. I got this from reproducing his graph on the same site

[@princeofexcess]

and so what that they neighbors. Poland is neighbor to check republic. 95% of polish people are catholics in check 59% of the country is agnostic, atheist, a non-believer or a non-organized believer. And we have more similar climate then Canada and US. I know people that experience culture shock after coming to US from canada so i doubt its so similar after all. Its hard to compare unless you have real data. Like how many people drink how much have dangerous jobs. etc

[@princeofexcess]

what do you mean similar? In what way? plus whats the percentage of fat people in canada? Stats from nationmaster (dont know how reliable this is) state US as number 1 while canada on 11th place this is huge difference. They have less then half of fat people then USA ! And canada has worse doctors worse equipment and higher w8ting period then USA. US has second best w8ting period and best equipment in the world and doctors.

[@tjockisgurra]

Where the F do you get off comparing Sweden to the Soviet union? And 1984? It just shows your lack of insight...

[@axelasdf]

The "Global Government" comment at the start turned me off to the video immediately. I like sovereign competing states. "Friends with all, but allies with none".

[@grraadd]

yea global rule and the global bureaucracy of Swedish style socialists....... run aground your own country first and then we will see the results and maybe consider those utopian ideas - if we'll loose our mind first!

[@Kreadus005]

Ahahahahahaha... Yeah. Sure he isnt