The passion this man has for what he does is intoxicating.  In every one of his talks you are amazing, laughing, and intrigued by the statistical information he is dishing out.  He takes something so dry like health stats and makes a truly compelling case for it and then gets you wrapped up in the excitement that comes from being able to take these dry stats and put them in a format that the average person can manipulate and appreciate.  Something which he spearheaded with gapminder.org.

A little more from this TED Profile:

Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.

What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.

Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster’s flair.

Tags: aids, gapminder.org, hans rosling, hiv, passion, poverty, statistics, stats, sweden, swedish