Story teller, Edutainer, a true Data Rock Star

Professor Hans Rosling, a great Story Teller and a real Visualization Guru, mostly known for his famous The Best Stats you ‘ve ever Seen TED lecture, passed away on February 7th. Today, across the world, thousands of people use his guidelines for designing interactive visualization tools and millions share his vision of a fact-based worldview that everyone can understand. It is only fair to say that every single vendor offering Data Visualization Analytical tools has been largely affected by Professor Rosling’s data narration paradigm.

Professor Rosling’s journey into Storytelling though Data Visualizations started seven years ago, when he decided to “drop out” of university and found with his son, Ola Rosling and Ola’s wife, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Gapminder ( http://www.gapminder.org), becoming a world famous public educator, or “Edutainer”, as he liked to call it.

For all of us in the Data Visualization and Visual Analytics communities, he will be remembered as the passionate scientist that took previously incomprehensible data, filtered them through the magic of Visualization and narrated through them data stories in the most understandable and simple possible way, for everyone. He has been the definition of an Edutainer, the true "Carl Sagan" of our field. The least each and everyone of us must do is keep on with his fight against "alternative facts" and "post truth". We owe him! At least we, at CyberStream, do.

To fully appreciate his legacy on into Storytelling though Data Visualizations see also this interview for the Danish TV, demonstrating his eloquence, his sense of humor, and even his idiosyncrasy.