Hans Rosling, the master of making statistics fun was recently in an interview with Danish television. The journalist tried to get him to succumb to the terrible status of the world that the media keeps displaying, giving as an example the terror facing Nigeria. Rosling counters with: “Yes, sure there’s terror in a SMALL part of Nigeria. But the rest of Nigeria is a great country with a stable economic growth and stagnating child mortality. Why don’t you show that part? If you choose to show the sole of my shoe only – which is quite ugly – of course everyone will think that the sole of the shoe represents me. Now, if you instead choose to show my face that’s another thing.”

The reporter goes on to talk about the injustice of the income. That the 1% of people live in richess and the rest is poor. Again, Rosling argues: “You are wrong. Most people in the world live in the middle. Out of the people who can afford to go on holiday – half of them lives outside of the Western world.”

“The amount of children on this planet is not increasing anymore”, continues Rosling. The report then kicks in with: “How do you know all this?”

Rosling answers: “I use commonly known statistics from the Worldbank and UN. This is nothing controversial. It’s not something up for discussion. I am right and you are wrong.”

Here’s the 2 min clip with English subtitles:

If you want to see the full 9 min interview with English subtitles, it’s here.

For those of you who don’t know Hans Rosling. Here’s one of his inspiring TEDTalks: “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen”