Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four

Visualization is right at the heart of my own work too.

I teach Global Health, and I know
having the data is not enough.

I have to show it in ways people
both enjoy and understand.

Now I'm going to try something I've never done
before, animating the data in real space,

with a bit of technical assistance from the crew.

So here we go, first an axis for health,

life expectancy from 25 years to 75 years.

And down here an axis for wealth,
income per person 400, 4,000, and $40,000.

So down here is poor and sick,
and up here is rich and healthy.

Now I'm going to show you
the world 200 years ago, in 1810.

Here come all the countries Europe brown,
Asia red, Middle East green,

Africa South of the Sahara blue,
and the Americas yellow.

And the size of the country bubble
show the size of the population.

And in 1810 it was pretty
crowded down there, wasn't it?

All countries were sick and poor, life
expectancy were below 40 in all countries.

And only the UK and the Netherlands
were slightly better off, but not much.

And now, why start the world.

The Industrial Revolution makes countries in
Europe and elsewhere move away from the rest.

But the colonized countries in Asia and
Africa, they are stuck down there.

And eventually the Western countries
get healthier and healthier.

And now we slow down, to show
the impact of the First World War,

and the Spanish flu epidemic, what a catastrophe.

And now I speed up through the 1920s and the 1930s,

and in spite of the Great Depression,

western countries forge on towards
greater wealth and health.

Japan and some others try to follow,
but most countries stay down here.

Now, after the tragedies of the Second World War,

we stop a bit to look at the world in 1948.

1948 was a great year, the war was over,

Sweden topped the medal table at
the Winter Olympics, and I was born.

But the differences between the countries
of the world was wider than ever.

United States was in the front, Japan
was catching up, Brazil was way behind,

Iran was getting a little richer
from oil, but still had short lives.

And the Asian giants, China,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and

Indonesia, they were still poor and sick down here.

But look what is about to happen, here we go again.

In my lifetime former colonies gained independence and

then finally they started to get
healthier and healthier and healthier.

And in the 1970s then countries in Asia and

Latin America started to catch
up with the Western countries.

They became the emerging economies,

some in Africa follows, some Africans were
stuck in civil war, and others hit by HIV.

And now, we can see the world today
in the most up-to-date statistics.

Most people today live in the middle,

but there's a huge difference at the same time between
the best off countries and the worst off countries.

And there are huge inequalities within countries.

These bubbles show country
averages, but I can split them.

Take China, I can split it into provinces,

there goes Shanghai.

It has the same wealth and health as Italy today.

And there is the poor inline province
Guizhou, it is like Pakistan,

and if I split it further, the rural
parts are like Ghana in Africa.

And yet despite the enormous disparities today,
we have seen 200 years of remarkable progress,

that huge historical gap between
the west and the rest is now closing.

We have become an entirely new converging world,

and I see a clear trend into the future with
aid, trade, green technology, and peace.

It's fully possible that everyone can
make it to the healthy wealthy corner.

Well what you've just seen in the last few minutes

is a story of 200 countries shown
over 200 years and beyond.

It involved plotting 120,000 numbers, pretty neat uh?