Hans Rosling, the great visualizer, to speak at TED

In December, we blogged Gapminder, the Swedish non-profit that’s developed software to bring statistics to life. We were deeply impressed by their stunning interactive graphs, which help you visualize complex trends — like the distribution of poverty, in different regions of the world, over time. So we’re thrilled to report that gapminder co-founder Hans Rosling, whose near-legendary talks have captured attention around the world, will join our program in Monterey next week. You’ll hear a lot from Rosling in the months (and years) to come. Gapminder just negotiated a breakthrough contract with the United Nations, to bring all of the UN’s statistical data into these graphs, and make them publicly available online. One small step for global understanding …