Hans Rosling thoroughly impressed me in his TED talk from about two years ago aptly titled “Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen“.

I’ve never seen someone so excited by data. I was excited too, since Rosling does more than just slap some graphs on a slide. He tells a story with the data.

Rosling explains:

Statistics has to go together with other information and with experience. That’s when it’s useful…People are not stupid. They will understand statistics and they will use it, if it’s made available in relevant and interesting ways.

As professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, Rosling explores data drawn mostly from the United Nations, intent on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world. His arguments and observations are convincing, though his main appeal lies in the way he presents data.

Convinced that global data should be accessible and understandable, Rosling founded Gapminder with his son and daughter-in-law in 2005. Gapminder was purchased by Google in 2007.

Gapminder assembles and standardizes an impressive collection of international data, then presents them as animated, interactive graphs. By emphasizing statistical time series, Gapminder gives life to numbers on economy, energy, health, employment and more.

Who would have thought I could waste a whole morning generating charts on infant mortality, oil consumption, and family size? The interface is incredibly slick, the data are thought-provoking, and the animations are illuminating.

In short — you have to try it.

In our data-obsessed culture, we need more pioneers like Rosling to help us find comprehensive and engaging methods to present information. We’ve got numbers on everything, but information is easily misconstrued unless placed in the proper context, in relation to other relevant information.

Perhaps more importantly — let’s be honest here — numbers are boring to most people. A typical Excel table or graph isn’t capable of empowering and mobilizing people for broad social change.

Rosling shows us how global data — presented in the right way — naturally lead to an engaging look at the big picture. Presenting information should tell a story.

Rosling’s story is about how the world is getting more and more similar. He predicts countries like China and India will replace western nations (like the United States and the United Kingdom) as the leading world economy by 2048.

What’s your story?