Guardian Unlimited — Uncovering global inequalities through innovative statistics

Charles Arthur — 11 January 2007
Hans Rosling has achieved what most scientists would call “enough”. Having studied statistics and medicine for seven years at Sweden’s Uppsala University, he worked in Bangalore and Mozambique - discovering, in the latter in 1981, a formerly unknown paralysing disease which (with the research group he then oversaw) is now known as konzo.

But Rosling has done far more since. His latest work asks why governments think it is better to hide their data in silos, and deny its usefulness, in the face of the work that he and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is professor of international health, are now doing.

This is technically stunning as well as making powerful political points — and doing so with wit. I wonder if any of the business intelligence companies offer anything as enlightening as Rosling’s software. You can see more about it here.