21 March 2007

Google and TED sword-swallowing demographer team up to think outside the X and Y axes

Google has acquired Hans Rosling's Trendalyzer software, which the Swedish demographer and his team at Gapminder have developed since 2005 to generate more useful visualizations of facts and figures. Rosling has met the Google founders at TED2006, where he gave a thought-provoking speech on the nature of statistics and the general misinterpretation of them (see short summary and video of that speech). At TED2007 ten days ago he gave another insightful speech, ending it with the now-famous sword-swallowing moment (yes, Rosling is a serious demographer but also -- another deadly serious activity -- one of the few sword-swallowers active in Sweden). Photo Robert Leslie/TED:

Marissa Mayer of Google comments the acquisition on their blog: "Gathering data and creating useful statistics is an arduous job that often goes unrecognized. We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes." The Trendalyzer team will join Google in Mountain View to work on developing the tools; the non-profit Gapminder Foundation -- whose goal is to "to promote a fact-based worldview by bringing statistical story-telling to new levels" -- will instead continue operating out of Stockholm.
(Via IHT Metamedia)

Technorati Tags: Hans Rosling, Google, Gapminder, TED2006, TED2007