Mind-blowing visulization of population data

I’ve been watching TED Talks and Hulu while treadmilling (wireless video inside the house seems more reliable now that we’re on Comcast’s super-fast Internet service) and randomly chose this talk from the Top 10 list by doctor and researcher Hans Rosling. Bottom line? It’s must see TV.

If you are a fan of data visualizations, population trends, government policy, comparisons between countries, or just even mildly curious about changes to our world in the last 30-40 years, prepare to be blown away by this video.

The TEDTalks site blurb has it right: 

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”

After you’ve watched the video and are hungry for more, visit Gapminder.org, Dr. Rosling’s nonprofit venture to help people create visualizations like the ones you saw in the video.

The 7 Deadly Sins of the Financial Crisis

I taught a Sunday school class about the financial crisis last weekend. My presentation was packed with charts and included a crash course on mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps (not our typical Sunday school fare, in case you were wondering.)

In retrospect, this cartoon which I found on Digg, pretty much sums it all up without the financial mumbo-jumbo:

The numbers behind the mortgage meltdown

If you want to understand and see the trends behind the mortgage meltdown, check out this presentation. It’s dense, but probably the single best presentation I’ve seen explaining the mess. Stay tuned for my next post, which takes a very different approach to teaching you about what happened.

Making Sense of the Mortgage Meltdown

From: pkedrosky, 1 day ago

Making Sense of the Mortgage Meltdown

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: kedrosky milken)

Great slide deck untangling the mortgage meltdown from a seminar today at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles.

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