Kan inte låta bli att hoppas på att Rosling tar med sig bajonetten (spola fram tidsmarkören till sista partiet om du bara vill se det). Sensmoralen han vill ge oss förtjänar den spektakulära demonstrationen och Bonnier kan nog alltid lära sig mer av den läxan: "The seemingly impossible is possible"

/Gustav Svensson

When I started working in publishing, Eurostat had just decided to stop selling data, and there was a heated  debate between proponents of free data dissemination, and those who prefered the conservative model of selling data to those who used it. This debate and its consequences, which I will probably discuss in another post, clouded the fact that, priced or not,in the vast majority of cases data remained copyrighted. In other words, although you don't have to buy it, you are not allowed to reuse it without express content of the copyright owner.

How we handled it at the OECD is that we have a rights unit, to which you should send a request, and they came back to you with a contract and a price. In almost every case (personal use, small data sets...) the copyright was waived, but the simple fact that data are protected under the copyright means that people are not allowed to use it directly, even if they didn't pay to get it. Free is not public.

In a paper Infringement Nation, law professor John Tehranian explains how after an ordinary day, "he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges)." - by seemingly innocuous activities like answering emails, taking photographs of people, doodling on his notepad or distributing reading material to his students. Another law professor, Larry Lessig, made this famous presentation describing the impact of ever-stricter enforcement of copyright laws.

What does this mean? That as some copyright owners are more and more prompt to sue them, users are not going to use content if it is not explicitly said that they can. This flies in the face of efforts made by the OECD or others to offer more content for free, which is still copyrighted.

Enters Creative Commons. Creative Commons, initially an initiative by Larry Lessig, is a sensible answer to the problems raised by abuse of copyright law. It's a flexible license that can be summarized by non-obtrusive symbols. So instead of sporting a (c), a "copyright xxxx", or "all rights reserved." on every web page, a content provider can use a Creative commons badge that could say, for instance, free to use and to reproduce for non-commercial use but with attribution to the author. Or, why not, "public" as in, no strings attached.

The problem is that Creative Commons were an American initiative, so the license was inscribed in the American legal context. In the early 2000s CC badges flourished on international blogs, but they were only decorative because the CC licenses had not been localized yet. As of now, Creative Commons International has adapted the project in 43 territories.The Australian Bureau of Statistics, for instance, is moving towards CC.

But that is still not enough to cover intergovernmental organizations. Some of our readers won't be able to sue us, and we won't be able to sue them, that kind of thing. So we did the next best thing and we adapted our terms of use.

Under the new terms of use you can do what you want with data or OECD content as long as you're not reproducing a whole book (but a book minus 10 pages is OK) and it's not for commercial use, in which case you still have to get explicit consent and fees may apply. But for personal use you can reproduce data and graphs from the OECD without asking.

The only question that remains is the citing of the data. I don't cite my sources very academically on this blog but I do provide links to where I found the data, which always contain detailed copyright information. The OECD has always provided specifications about how to cite its material, which are IMO too heavy and too complicated not to deter their practical application. Yet, we are opposed to people writing, "source: OECD." after a graph, without any other mention. Hans Rosling says we should sue those who do. Hmm...

Some people who are notorious for doing that are the respectable Economist. In their daily charts column, another inspiration for this blog, they never acknowledge their sources beyond the name of the institution. Take this chart, for instance. This is about comparing working hours, and the source given is OECD. This is another subject where experts are not too fond of bar charts, because measurement methods vary significantly from country to country and minute comparison are not too accurate. But then again, we publish annual worked hours. The people who made the chart then adapted the data to show hours worked per week, holidays excluded. Many commenters expressed doubt. But it wasn't possible to check the calculations or to obtain any extra information, because they won't mention anything beyond the name OECD (other providers don't enjoy a more favorable treatment). I think it's only fair to require, for people who cite data online, a link to where data was taken, not necessarily a Harvard-compliant citation.

So, have you had a problem with copyright? data access? what do you think of these issues?

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1442587&w=425&h=350&fv=bgColor%3DFFFFFF%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fmovies%2FHANSROSLING_high.flv%26autoPlay%3Dfalse%26fullscreenURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fflash%2Ffullscreen.html%26forcePlay%3Dfalse%26logo%3D%26allowFullscreen%3Dtrue]

So what is this software called Trendalyzer? Well to quote Gapminder - "Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. "

This is certaintly true, as Dr Roslings excellent presentation demonstrates. And guess what company has recently acquired Trendalyzer? Stand up messrs. Brin and Page of Google. This should prove to be very interesting.

En este video, en un inglés muy sencillo, Hans Rosling explica la evolución de la distribución de la riqueza en el mundo. Hans es el creador de Gapminder, una herramienta online para visualizar información de manera dinámica y elocuente. Una idea que tiene mucho futuro. También tiene un blog, aquí la dirección: http://roslingsblogger.blogspot.com/

Si bien se dice “distribución de la riqueza” esto no debe entenderse como que hay cierta riqueza que se reparte. Más bien quiere decir que la información que se está mostrando está indicando cuántas personas viven con cierto nivel de ingresos. Es una división matemática, no una repartija a criterio de alguien.

Gapminder bietet hervorragend animierte historisch verfolgbare Statistiken zu allen möglichen Weltdaten wie Kindersterblichkeit, Welteinkommensverteilung, AIDS-Infektionsraten, CO2 Ausstoß etc. Die Daten basieren auf einen Pool weltweiter öffentlich zugänglicher Datenbanken.

Die Gapminder-Stiftung wurde von dem schwedischen Arzt und Universitäts-Professor Hans Rosling und seinem Sohn Ola Rosling gegründet. Hans Rosling, Begründer der schwedischen Ärzte ohne Grenzen und Berater der WHO, UNICEF und diversen anderen Organisationen, ist für seine enthusiastischen Vorträge bekannt.

Auf >> TED (Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers) gibt es ein Video eines Rosling-Vortrages, der wirklich sehenswert ist. Wären alle Universitätsprofessoren von diesem Schlag, ich würde mich im Vortragssaal lebenslänglich anketten lassen ;o)

At any rate, the presentation below is outstanding. As a wannabe statistician (and I use that term loosely), I love seeing how people display stats and engage the audience in snooze-worthy lectures that involve the "d" word....DATA! Hans Rosling does a great job here and it turns out that Google Docs offers a free program similar to the one Hans uses in this presentation. It's called Motion Charts and my goal is to find a way to use something like this in my own research. And here's another link worth checking out for more examples of making stats fun.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4237353244338529080]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Seriously.

I like empirical evidence and statistically significant results and although becoming a statistic is bad, understanding them is good and being an informed consumer of them is even better. Hans Rosling developed a software program that makes statistics less static and brings them to life. His charts are moving images that, if you're a more visual learner like me, help you to better understand and ultimately use the free statistical information that's out there.

I'm not good with facts and figures. If you start spouting out numbers, measurements, dates or times and look closely at me, my eyes will start to glaze over. But show me pictures and my brain has half a chance at filing the information away in my memory bank. Show me a moving image and you've doubled my retention rate. Lucky for me, technology has finally caught up to the needs of my brain (or I've watch way too much TV in my lifetime and trained my brain to need images to function - who knows).

Just this morning I learned that their's a fairly proportional relationship between health and wealth across the globe. However, often times, in many parts of the world, health proceeds wealth. The statistics showed how the other parts of the world are gaining on us (can you say China) in terms of both health and wealth. Another interesting tidbit, is how third world countries have improved their life expectancy by decreasing family size and how this translated to improving their wealth and earning potential.

In Africa this is extremely important because making $1 a day isn't all that different, functionally speaking, then making $7 a day because once you get home from work you're still going to have to cook over a flame and shit outside. But make as little as $10 a day and you jump to a lifestyle complete with indoor plumbing and appliances.

I bring this up because before we know it, it'll be convention time here in the US and we'll be inundated with politicians and their promises, not to mention all of the pontificating pundits telling us how to think about everything that is said. Maybe instead you should let the statistics guide you as you determine your position on universal health care, birth control, abstinence only programs and ways to improve our economy. It really is quite fascinating and eye opening.

My personal favourite is Hans Rosling's statistics, the first TED tak I ever watched. Ken Robinson's 'How Schools Kill Creativity' is one every writer and fan of stories should read. So should every parent with a child at scholl, and anyone still at school.

Well, a short video by Hans Rosling, forwarded to me by my all seeing supervisor, might help. In the video [posted below] Rosling conveniently tracks and compares the development of Sweden between 1709 and 2004, with the use of some spectacular graphics. At the start Sweden is comparable with current day Sierra Leone, but by 2004 the Swedish nation has progressed to a stage where life expectancy is around 80 years and per capita GDP is roughly US$20,000.

The video is most interesting because we're able to see just how different the FOI nations, which range from Iceland, Uganda, India, Angola, Uzbekistan, Germany and Azerbaijan, are as Rosling demonstrate exactly how they compare to the situation of Sweden in different times and in the current period. For instance, Uganda implemented FOI in 2005, a year in which life expectancy and per capita GDP of that country were equivalent to the Sweden of.......1877. 

Conclusion: a lot has happened since FOI was first conceived in 1766 and there are great, great differences in terms of development between the countries that have rapidly embraced the reform in recent years.

After watching that, you should absolutely must head straight on over to gapminder.org and be dazzled.

You can even access the gapminder graph and manipulate both axes. Awesome.

The top 10 TED talks of all time:

1. Jill Bolte Taylor: "My stroke of insight"
2. Jeff Han: "Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone"
3. David Gallo: "Underwater astonishments"
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: "Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo"
5. Arthur Benjamin: "Lightning calculation and other 'Mathemagic'"
6. Sir Ken Robinson: "Do schools kill creativity?"
7. Hans Rosling: "The best stats you've ever seen"
8. Tony Robbins: "Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better"
9. Al Gore: "15 ways to avert a climate crisis"
10. Johnny Lee: "Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote"

(Image source: Unhindered by Talent on Flickr)

My trusty Google Alerts on all things Govt 2.0 have been feeding me a steady trickle of reaction and reportage on a draft paper from scholars at Princeton which was released last month. In the paper the authors argue that the US federal government should pretty much get out of the business of maintaining websites and simply release the data.

In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties’ use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

Typical reaction from the Web 2.0 set is along the lines of:

That's a compelling vision of the future of open government, and one that makes a lot of sense. The idea is something like CSS -- which separates the display code of a web site from the content. A government data platform would separate the content from the task of displaying it, which the commercial and non-profit spaces are likely better suited for than the government itself.

OK, well sure, makes sense that someone who's got buckets of data that was publicly paid for (like Stats Canada, to take a Canuck example) should be making it freely available for others to use, for mashups or something similar.

This is basically the same argument that Hans Rosling makes with his Gapminder project and in this mind-melting presentation at TED from a couple of years back (presenting macroeconomics data like a sportscaster -- wow!). He's been working specifically with UN data, but the idea is still basically the same.

But to suggest that Govt should get out of the Web business altogether is absurd.

First off, there's the privacy issue - lots of Govt data is about individual citizens. I'm not sure how well people would take it if their information was being accessed by marketers or advertisers who were able to freely connect to the social insurance database or the passport database. Think of the Facebook vs privacy controversy - and then up the angst by orders of magnitude. So while making some govt data more freely available is a good thing, there's lots of data that the bureaucracy holds that really no one else should be able to get at. (But this isn't really a Web publishing issue is it - it's more about NOT publishing at all.)

More importantly, there are other compelling reasons for the existence of Government Web sites than just to provide a shell for their databases - like, well, gee, how about informing citizens about what Govt is up to? Don't you want to know how your taxes are being used? Don't you want to know how the government of the day is responding to issues or dealing with crises?

As a citizen, I'd be pretty miffed if I could no longer go to directly to www.parl.gc.ca to see what's going on in Parliament. Sure, most of the time it's a bore, and the really big news gets reported by the media and blogosphere, but I still like the idea that I can go there and see for myself what is happening -- without any filter. And plus the protocol stuff is pretty funny.

Or what about getting access to government services - I would rather go to www.canada.gc.ca directly to find out how to apply for government services than have to check with a third party. And if I wanted to check on the status of my tax refund? Again I'm not sure that I'd want to go to a third party to see whether my cheque is in the mail or not (here's an example where privacy and Web publishing come together).

Basically, framing the issue as an either/or choice doesn't make a lot of sense for me. There is lots of room for both opening up govt databases for third party use and also to maintain a solid govt web presence.

Other reporting on this can be found here, here, here and here.

Enough of me. Just click the link.

Gap Minder

I also recommend that you watch this talk given by Hans Rosling at the 2007 TED Conference, which is how I first learned about Gap Minder. It gives you a good idea of the possibilities of this tool.

The one most relevant here is GapCast #5 - Bangladesh Miracle described below:

Have you heard about Miracle that has happened in Bangladesh over the last 30 years? No? In 1970 an average women in Bangladesh gave birth to 7 children, and one of four of them died before the age of five.

But after independence from Pakistan in 1971 things have improved. See Hans Roslings GapCast #5 to see how much.

Fascinating and really instructive. Some hard lessons for all of us, irrespective of the disciplines we practice as it shows how received wisdom can be so very wrong.

What one sees in the changes that have happened in Bangladesh over just 30 years should also be compared with his early look on the developments in Sweden over 300 years.

So, Bangladesh is a leading country in the world not just in population density but also in the speed and rate of reduction of child mortality. Grameen Bank and focus on micro-credits for women played clearly a very big part in this quiet and generally overlooked transformation. More startlingly, this transformation has not been fueled by a mad rush to urbanisation either.

Prof. Rosling is not surprised by this. As he says in another lecture, this time to an IT audience in Ireland in November 2007:

"Ignorance is not a problem, it is preconceived ideas. Otherwise the students (from a leading university in Sweden) would not score significantly worse on a comparison test (1.8 +/- 0.4) than the chimpanzee (2.5) guesses right!"

His Trendanalyzer software can be seen on the website of the Gapminder Foundation. His blog is here.

Once again, thanks to Lilly's brilliance at finding golden links on the web!

Swedish doctor/researcher Hans Rosling uses data visualization software to unpack global socioeconomic trends in these two lively and fascinating (some also say controversial) TED talks, one in 2006 and another in 2007. A good example, I think, of how massive amounts of data can be turned into incredibly rich animations to present a complex theory/argument quickly, persuasively.

Words of wisdom and caution from Edward Tufte, a pioneer/master in the field of information design and data visualization:

"... statistical graphics, just like statistical calculations, are only as good as what goes into them. An ill-specified or preposterous model or a puny data set cannot be rescued by a graphic (or by calculation), no matter how clever or fancy. A silly theory means a silly graphic."

"Graphical excellence begins with telling the truth about data."