Statistics That Mean Something

I was watching Bill Gate's TED presentation on malaria on the TED website. This is the now-famous speech where he release a jar of mosquitoes into the audience. I was struck by how Gate's speaking style has changed in the past decade. He still keeps one hand in his pocket, but with the other hand he uses interesting, natural gestures. He speaks in a very comfortable, conversational style, and at times he is really funny. I enjoyed watching him speak.

I was also impressed by how he made his statistics meaningful to the audience. In one part of the speech, he talks about how the disease is now only in the poorer countries, which leads to it not getting much investment.

This is what he said:

"In 1900, it's everywhere. In 1945, it's still in most places. In 1970, the U.S and most of Europe have gotten rid of it. 1990, you've gotten most of the northern areas. And more recently . . . it's just around the equator."

The information could easily have been shared on one slide with four or five bullet points. The typical presentation of factual information.

But instead, Gates shows a series of slides demonstrating how malaria was eliminated from all of the temperate zones, which is where the rich countries are. The counties that have malaria are in red. The countries where it has been eradicated are in beige. As Gates speaks, we literally watch it disappear from the rich countries.

As a result, we better understand why the issue doesn't seem like a big problem to Americans, and therefore why it hasn't received much investment. Gates goes on to tell the audience that more money has been put into baldness drugs than malaria -- helping us better understand how little attention the issue has received. He makes the statistics meaningful, and gets us to care about the problem.