Thomas: Hello. It is episode 11 of season two of the Presentation Boss Podcast. Welcome, it is lovely to have you with us, and today we are doing a presentation breakdown where Kate and I, we watch a presentation from the internet, and we will pause it as it plays to make, uh, observations and comments about what’s working well and the things that we really like, and those things that we don’t love. And, uh, the good news today is we are not just doing a presentation breakdown. We are probably doing presentation we

Kate: Yeah.

Thomas: so desperately have wanted to do

Kate: Yeah. Um, so this is, when we started this podcast seven years ago, we really wanted to do this presentation because it is one of both of our favorites, and we just couldn’t because it was audio only, and it is such a visual presentation. So if you are listening on audio, try and turn on video somehow, which I know is easier said than done for some people.

But if you are able, watch this one or, you know, go back later and watch it. It is interesting. It is worth it. Um, it’s our favorite.

Thomas: Yeah, look, today we are doing Hans Rosling, who I hope you’ve heard the name. If you haven’t, you are in for a brilliant little episode here. Hans Rosling has done, um, something like 10 TED and TEDx talks, and he did the very… His very first one was in 2006, it was very much about just presenting some stats. And I think, um, like ever since then, he has been looked at and understood to be kind of the gold standard in data communication. I don’t think in 2006, data storytelling as a concept, as a word, as a title, even a thing. Like, I think he was ahead of his time there

Kate: I think you’re right. Um, thinking about all of the books that I have, Stephen Few was one of the first in 2009, and then the big kind of storytelling with data wasn’t until 2015 when it really became a more mainstream, um, concept. So yeah, he was absolutely ahead of his time. He still, he still, after all of this, you know, stuff has come out, is still held up as one of the best.

So yeah, he was, um, he pi- was a pioneer really in this space

Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And, uh, in 2017 he passed away. I, I remember hearing the news ’cause

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Thomas: I’m a bit sad. I like him, I like his talks, and he did set up his Gapminder company which deals a lot with analytics, and I believe is still running. It’s still run by his son, right, Kate?

Kate: Yeah, yeah, it is. And, um, again, they were a pioneer in the data, uh, visualization, like software

Thomas: Mm, yeah

Kate: Um, yeah, the software that we kind of all have and use now. Yeah

Thomas: It was a pre-Power BI kind

Kate: Mm.

Thomas: Yeah, look, and, uh, we have this very talk today. It’s a 13-minute talk. tight, it’s punchy, um, it’s brilliant, and we have shown this in our workshops as a bit of an example of how you can do even complex data storytelling, but make it engaging, make it understandable, and make it, quite frankly, good. And, um-

Kate: And this is exactly how to do that. There are such specific steps on exactly what to do

Thomas: Yeah, hopefully we catch all of them and make comment about all of them. Uh, the only other two things to note, one is think, I think he has an absolutely excellent Swedish accent. I really like listening to the, to the Swedish accent. And also this, uh, this particular talk, that we’re looking at today, it’s his ninth that he did with TED, and it was filmed at the TEDx Summit in Doha in Qatar. It’s worth remembering that he is in Qatar for this talk ’cause he does reference it in the actual presentation itself. Should we kick on, Kate? Should we have a look at this one?

Kate: Let’s do it

Thomas: Excellent. So this is Hans Rosling with Religion and Babies from TEDx in Qatar

Hans Rosling: I’m going to talk about religion, but it’s a broad and very delicate so I have to limit myself, and therefore I will limit myself to only talk about the links between religion and sexuality. No, this is a very serious talk. So I will talk of what I remember as the most wonderful. when the young couple whisper, “Tonight, we’re going to make a baby.” My talk will be about the impact of religions on the number of babies per woman.

Kate: Wow. What an opener. Again, I will remind you that we’re in Qatar, in one of the most culturally conservative areas of the world. Um, and he just opens with, “We’re gonna be talking about sex and religion.” Like, it’s bold. It’s bold

Thomas: Yeah, this demonstrates two things to me. One is lovely use of humor. Like, let’s just, uh, let’s just set expectations on this I’m just gonna tackle these potentially controversial topics. The other thing that I think this does is y- y- you know that these are potentially controversial topics, and to blatantly say, “This is what I’m gonna talk about,” I know, and I…

well, I really hope that this presenter is going to tackle these topics sensitively. Like, this isn’t going to be kind of controversial or offensive or anything like that. So it ju- I think the humor

Kate: it sounds self-aware.

Thomas: Correct. Yeah.

Kate: Yeah

Thomas: Yeah

Kate: All right, let’s crack on

Hans Rosling: This is indeed important because everyone understands that there is some sort of limit on how many people we can be on this planet. And, and there are some people who say that the world population is growing like this, three billion in 1960, seven billion just last year, and it will continue to grow because there are religions that stops women from having few babies, and it may continue like this. To what extent are these people right? When I was born, there was less than one billion children in the world, and today, thousand, there’s almost two billion. What has happened since, and what do the experts predict will happen with the number of children during this century? This is a quiz. do you think? Do you think it will decrease to one billion? it remain the same and be two billion by the end of the century? Will the number of children increase here, children up to 15 years, or will it continue in the same fast rate and be four billion children up there? tell you by the end of my speech, but now

Kate: Okay. There’s a bit going on here.

Thomas: Oh

Kate: Let’s tackle the data bi- the, the data viz first. And that is, he’s got the num- the rate of, uh, number of people in the world rather. Um, and it is so stupidly simple. It is a line graph with one line, and it is thick. It is a super thick line. A lesser presenter, and, you know, what we see constantly is, you know, you use your defaults, which is a thin line that makes it difficult to see, but this just makes it fat.

And then when it’s, um, a hypothesis, so kind of predicting into the future, it changes to dotted lines, which gives it a really visual separation between past and future. And this is what I love to see when, you know, um, we’re looking at other people’s data viz. The difference between, like, a forecast, put it in dotted in gray and separate it from the past, the actuals.

Beautiful data viz. Um, and then the second thing is the hypothesis. It asks a question that makes you want the answer. So from the beginning, he’s constantly linking these, like, um … Not linking, he’s constantly, like, making these statements that, that keep you listening to the next piece

Thomas: Yeah, and I think that this, this engagement question at the start, how many children will there be in the year 2100? think it’ll be really easy for him to say, “The answer is this, now let me tell you why.” Whereas I feel like that kind of just gives away the punchline almost. It’s like, like

Kate: Yeah

Thomas: end of the talk.”

Let’s step through what is going to get us to the answer. It’s just a brilliant piece of engagement. Um, like you said, the charts are so simple. There’s gonna be probably complex information here, but it is just rounded to the nearest billion of children. Um,

Kate: stream of information. Yeah, uh, attention

Thomas: yeah, there is so much detail stripped away. All right. Should we continue?

Kate: Yep, let’s let it go for a little bit longer. We’re only two minutes in, but it’s just so exciting.

Thomas: Let’s try and not pause every 30 seconds.

Kate: Yep..

Hans Rosling: What religion have to do with it? When you want to classify religion, it’s more difficult than you think. You go to Wikipedia, and the first map you find is this. It divides the world into Abrahamic religions and Eastern religion, but that’s not detailed enough. So we went on, and we looked in Wikipedia, we found this map, but that subdivide Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism into many subgroups, which was too detailed.

Therefore, at Gapminder, we made our own map, and it looks like this. is each country is a bubble. size is the population, big China, big India here, and the color now is the majority religion. It’s a religion where more than fifty percent of the people say that they belong. It’s Eastern religion in India and China, in neighboring Asian countries. Islam is the majority religion all the way from the Atlantic Ocean across the Middle East, Southern Europe, and through Asia, all the way to Indonesia. That’s where we find Islam majority. And Christian majority religions in these countries, they are blue, that is most countries in America and Europe, countries in Africa, and a few in Asia. white here are countries which cannot be classified because one religion does not reach fifty percent, or there’s doubt about the data, or there are some other reasons. We were careful with that.

Thomas: There is a really strong lesson here in what he’s just done. Map of the world bubbles on countries, four colors. That sounds simple, yet when you’re looking at it, there’s, two hundred odd dots here and a number of countries. The pace that he goes through and he says, “Here are the Eastern religions,” and clicks it, and those Eastern religions literally flash.

That’s all I’m looking at is, oh, where’s that kind of grouping? And then through to Islam, then to Christianity. Like, the pace he goes through this probably, to somebody like him who knows the information, painfully slow. But it is, I would argue, the rate that you need to, uh, drip feed in variable or that piece of context to make it sit with your audience. Combined with k-kind of like he said, we didn’t want too many categories, we didn’t want too few categories. He settled on four. That’s clearly gonna be– Well, I hope that is going to be categories for this to make sense, but not so many that it is overly detailed and complex to wrap your head around

Kate: Yeah. I think this is a lesson in explaining what your data is before explaining what the data is telling us. Beautiful example of that

Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I feel empowered now ’cause I know exactly how to interpret what I’m looking at

Hans Rosling: I take you over to this chart. This is in nineteen sixty, and now I show the number of babies per woman here, two, four, or six. babies, few babies. And here, the income per person in comparable dollars. The reason for that is that many people say you have to get rich first before you get few babies. So low income here, high income there.

And indeed, in nineteen sixty, you had to be a rich Christian to have few babies. The exception was Japan. Japan here was regarded as an exception, otherwise it was only Christian countries. But there were also many Christian countries that had six to seven babies per woman, but they were in Latin America or they were in Africa. And countries with, uh, Islam as majority religion, all of them almost had six to seven children per woman irregardless of the income level. And all the Eastern religions except Japan had the same level. Now let’s see what has happened in the world

Thomas: Okay, the rate of the through the familiarization with the chart. Now we’ve got this bubble plot, this kind of scatter plot, and as we have discussed, bubble plots are really difficult to use as an explain chart. way though he stepped through that, on the Y-axis, babies per woman, on the X-axis, we have income, and then again, we are… He’s pointed out we’ve got these rich Christian countries, we’ve got this, um, this green Islam field. Like he is stepping us through exactly what we are looking at. It demonstrates to me so much that he knows exactly what is in this data and exactly what he wants to point out. It, uh, just feels so secure in the hands of like an expert.

Hans Rosling: I start the world, and here we go. 1962, can you see they’re getting a little richer, but the number of babies per woman is falling. Look at China, they’re falling fairly fast. And all the Muslim majority countries across the income are coming down, as do the Christian, uh, majority countries in the middle income range. And when we enter into this century, you’ll find more than half the mankind down here. And by 2010, are actually 80% of humans who live in countries with about two children per woman

Kate: I

don’t want to keep pausing it, but w- we need to comment on the commentary that he provides here. And this is actually a bit of a Hans-like, um, signature, is he calls the moving data kinda like a, a horse race. Um, and it is, it is so impressive. It just tells you exactly what you should be looking at. He has this ridiculous fishing pole as his pointer.

Again, you normally see, like, someone with a laser, or they might even have a big stick, but he uses a fishing pole, which just makes it interesting to look at

Thomas: the wiggly fishing pole with the big black ball on the end of it. It’s, it’s, it’s iconic. And I know, you know, like I, I’m a… I tend towards a laser, and I know you really dislike the laser. You prefer

Kate: I hate a laser

Thomas: yeah, the physical interaction with a slide, which it works here, huh?

Kate: Yeah. Um, I prefer, yeah, like when I’m presenting, I prefer to go over to the screen and point at it. Um, which you’ve got a much bigger wingspan than me. I don’t know why you don’t do that more often too. But, um, this is on a TED stage. This is huge. Like, even with his fishing pole, he’s only kind of 70% of the way up the screen.

Um, there’s no way he can use his hands. So this is… Yeah. Okay. We are now gonna let it play for a lot longer.

The first five minutes of this is just so packed full of learnings and, and wonderful example, examples

Thomas: And I wanna, I wanna, I wanna key on that, the wonderful example here in the first five minutes, which is kind of like we said, the bubble plot is a complex plot ’cause you’ve got the X and the Y, you’ve got the color dictating the religion, and the size, which is population of the country. And then he animates it. There’s five variables on screen here, which, you know, by kind of pretty much every measure should not work for explaining data. But it is the way that he sets it up. He w- steps through, these are what these… the axes are, this is what the colors are, and then commentates that animation very specifically that makes it work. That’s kind of why these first five minutes are a bit of a masterclass in how you do data storytelling, ’cause he does a complex thing so well. Right, yes, yes. Let’s l- play. I’m sorry.

Hans Rosling: It’s a quite amazing development which have happened And these are countries from United States here with forty thousand dollar per capita. France, Iran, Mexico, Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia, India, and all the way to Bangladesh and Vietnam, which has less than five percent of the income per person in the United States and the same amount of babies per woman. I can tell you that the data on number of children per woman is surprisingly good in all countries. We get that from the census data. It’s not one of these statistics which is very doubtful. So what we can conclude is you don’t have to get rich to have few children. It has happened across the world And then when we look at, at religions, we can see that the Eastern religions, indeed, there’s not one single country with majority of that religion that has more than three children. Whereas with, as majority religion and Christianity, you see countries all the way, but there’s no major difference. There’s no major difference between these religions. There is a difference with income. The countries which has many babies per woman here, they have quite low income. Most of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa, but there are also countries here like Guatemala, like Papua New Guinea, like Yemen, and Afghanistan. Many think that Afghanistan here and Congo, which have suffered severe conflicts, that they ha- don’t have fast population growth. It’s the other way around. In the world today, it’s the countries that have the highest mortality rates that have the fastest population growth because the death of a child is compensated by one more child. These countries have six children per woman. They have a sad death rate of one to two children per woman, but thirty years from now, Afghanistan will go from thirty million to sixty million. Congo will go from sixty to a hundred and twenty. That’s where we have the fast population growth. And many think that all these countries, they are stagnant, but they are not.

Let me compare Senegal, Muslim-dominated country, with a Christian-dominated country, Ghana. I take them backwards here their independence when they were up here in the n- beginning of the 1960s. Just look what they have done. It’s an amazing improvement. From seven children per woman, they’ve gone all the way down to between four and five. It’s a tremendous improvement. So what does it take? Well, we know quite well what is needed in these countries. You need to have children to survive. You need to get out of the deepest poverty, so children are not of importance for work in the family. You need to have access to some family planning, and you need the fourth factor, which perhaps is the most important factor. But let me illustrate that fourth factor by looking at Qatar. Here we have Qatar today, there we have Bangladesh today. If I take these countries back to the years of their independence, which is almost the same years, ’71, ’72, a quite amazing development which have happened. Look at Bangladesh and Qatar.

With so different incomes, it’s almost the same drop in number of babies per woman .

Thomas: I love the technique that has been used here. So twice, he’s just on a co- direct comparison between two, uh, similar but different countries, right? There was Senegal and Ghana was that first pair, and now we’ve got Bangladesh and Qatar. Remember we said he’d mention Qatar. What was really interesting here, so on the bubble plot, you can see the kind of trends.

You can see that kind of average, great when you’ve got 200 dots on, on screen. But by comparing these two countries, done something really specific, which is he can put on the trail, so you can see the path, the pattern that the two countries have drawn over that sort of 70-year period, and he’s also faded out all of the other countries.

So my attention is very much on those two countries, but using that data to draw a trend so that it, uh, we’re no longer having to play the video to sort of watch those countries go back and forth. I can just see the trail on screen. I, I, I just… Again, I love this bit

Kate: Yeah, this is very much a software piece. Um, very specific custom designed software for this. Uh, and it’s, yeah, it’s amazing

Thomas: Hmm.

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Hans Rosling: Is the reason in Qatar? Well, I do as I always do. I went to the Statistical Authority of Qatar, to their webpage. It’s a very good webpage. I recommend it. And I looked up… Oh yeah, you can have lots of fun here, eh? And it’s provided free of charge. I found Qatar Social Trends very interesting. Lots to read.

I found fertility at birth, and I looked at total fertility rate per woman. These are the scholars and expert in the government agency in Qatar, and they say the most important factors are increased age at first marriage, increased educational level of Qatari women, and more women integrated in the labor force.

I couldn’t agree more. couldn’t agree more. is a country that indeed had gone through a very, very interesting modernization. So what it is, is these four. Children should survive, children shouldn’t be needed for work, women should get education and join the labor force, and family planning should be accessible. Now, look again at this. The average number of children in the world is like in Colombia. It’s two point four today. There are countries up here which are very poor, and that’s where family planning, better child survival is needed. I strongly recommend Melinda Gates’ last TED Talk. And down, there are many countries which are less than two children per woman. So when I go back now to give you the answer of the quiz, it’s two. We have reached peak child. The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child, eh? the world population will stop growing. United Nation Population Division has said they will stop growing at ten billion. why do they grow if the number of children doesn’t grow? Well,

Thomas: and there it is. There’s the payoff to the question at the start. What is the forecast for number of children in the world twenty one hundred? he says, “There it is. It’s two.” Because we’ve gone through all this information that is interesting. It has been interesting how we’ve gotten to that answer, even if you kind of forgot what the question was like.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. We were, um, looking for, for that.” I think that is a much more engaging way of keeping interest in the room is, here is the question. We will get to the answer rather than like, “There will always be two mil- uh, two billion children in the world, and here is why.” It’s like, I kind of already have the answer.

Maybe I’m not super intrigued in it. Um, but it’s a, it’s a satisfying little payoff there

Kate: It is. And I, I have actually seen someone do this, oh gosh, it was a couple of years ago, and it was a university. And the start of his presentation, he said, “Here is a question. What do you think the answer is going to be?” And then spent the time kind of building the case for the answer. Super engaging, and you know, this is just a really interesting thing that we can do and a possible thing that we can do. Like, I have seen this used out in the wild as well

Thomas: Hmm.

Hans Rosling: show you here. I will use these card boxes in which your notebooks came. They are quite useful for educational purposes. Each cardbox is one billion people, and there are two billion children in the world. There are two billion young people between fifteen and thirty. These are rounded number. Then there is one billion between thirty and forty-five, almost one between forty-five and sixty, and then it’s my box.

This is me, sixty plus, yeah? We are here on top. So what will happen now is what we call the big fill-up. You can see that it’s like three billion missing here. They are not missing because they’ve died. They were never born. Because before nineteen eighty, there was much fewer people born than there were during the last thirty years. So what will happen now is quite straightforward. The old, sadly, we will die. The rest of you, you will grow older, and you will get two billion children. the old will die, the rest will grow older and get two billion children, and then again, the old will die, and you will get two billion children This is the great fill up. It’s inevitable. And can you see that this increase took place without life getting longer and without adding children?

Kate: This has got to be one of my favorite sections in any talk ever. It would be so easy… Yeah, I think it would be so easy and so possible to do this on a screen. Um, even I could do this quite easily on PowerPoint or, you know, Excel or anything. But the fact that he does it with boxes and makes it so tangible, and it is, it is just incredible.

It is interesting, it is unique, it is physical. It, it’s got everything

Thomas: I agree. One of my favorite bits of data viz right here,

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Thomas: there’s a key word he says there. He says it’s two billion children. These numbers are rounded. He’s just kind of– That, that is so key. All he is trying to do here, all he is trying to achieve is where does this three billion gap, it get filled up? And this is, I think, just such a good definition of we just need a visual for this. It needs a visual. Using the boxes and literally that demonstration of taking that top box off, people who die, and lifting the rest of the population up as they age. This is genius. I love, always love physical like demonstration or data visualization.

This is just… It is so visual and like you said, tactile and physical, and I understand exactly why that got the applause that you can hear from the audience.

Kate: Yeah. Um, the word that I missed was meaningful. It wasn’t just for novelty, it was meaningful All right, let’s bring it home

Thomas: Yeah.

Hans Rosling: Religion has very little to do with the number of babies per woman. All the religions in the world are fully capable to maintain their values and adapt to this new world. And we will just ten billion in this world if the poorest people get out of poverty, their children survive, they get access to family planning. That is needed. it’s that we will be to three billion more. So when you discuss and when you plan for the resources and the energy needed for the future for human beings on this planet, you have to plan for ten billions. Thank you very much.

Kate: It gives me chills, like literal chills every time. This is, this is perfection because it ends with a call to action. It ends with, “This is what this not only means for the world, but this is what you need to do with this information.” This is a very specific recommendation. This is what you need to do

Thomas: I reckon that last, ooh, I would say frame, but like, um, couple of sentences is such a powerful visual. He’s got on screen that world population forecast chart, super simple chart, and the stack of boxes. It’s kind of his two main pieces of evidence are left on screen as he says exactly what you just said.

You’re, you’re so right. I, I again appreciate why this gets a standing ovation as well. Um, what, what a masterclass in data viz, right?

Kate: I’m not sure, have I seen a TED Talk with a standing ovation like that before?

Thomas: Was, was, um, the Fun with Flags talk got a standing ovation.

Kate: Ah, okay, cool.

Thomas: Maybe I just picked the popular talks, but, uh, hey, look, I mean, good talks get standing ovations, and that’s what I like to use as an example. Speaking of good talks, what’s your rating for Hans Rosling?

Kate: Eleven

Thomas: Okay, we’re just not, we’re not playing with the scale anymore, are we?

Kate: Yes, it’s an 11 out of 10.

I’m s- I’m sticking with it. I’m sticking with it

Thomas: It’s, it’s so good, isn’t it? And I would love… I think it is a genuine loss that we don’t have Hans Rosling to give talks like this anymore to see what he would create. Um, yeah, look, it is, it is right

Kate: What’s your number?

Thomas: It’s probably a 10 as well And I think that, you know, there’s obviously so much, um, brilliant data communication here. I think there is good use, uh, as well of humor. I think when that chart animates and he’s got his wiggly, silly fishing pole with the ball on the end, and it’s kind of just like this, this guy talking to the slide.

He’s narrating it, like you say, like it’s a horse race. It’s just, it’s iconic. Um, there is so much to take away from this. It is so worth watching. What else is there to say about Hans Rosling, Kate?

Kate: He’s just one of the greats. I’m really happy that we finally got to do this, um, breakdown. Um- It’s just good

Thomas: Yeah. Look, there is a link in the description as well to go and watch this TED Talk from Hans Rosling, Religion and Babies. I also encourage you ’cause he does in many of his other talks, he does use like physical data visualization, and in one of them he does sword swallowing. Just he is brilliant to watch. Um, so I encourage you to go and do that. And that might be all we have to say about Hans Rosling’s TED Talk in Doha 2012 on religion and babies

Kate: Great. Excellent. Thank you so much for being with us today. If you would like, head to presentationboss.com.au/podcast and you’ll find all of the resources and links for, um, today’s show

Thomas: Yeah. And if there is a talk, a presentation, something out there on the internet you would like us to break down here on the show, please do flick us the link. I love a recommendation. podcast@presentationboss.com.au

Kate: And of course, if you found value, if you loved this talk, um, please recommend us to a friend

Thomas: Lovely. Have a great week