Hans Rosling shows how visualizing public health statistics can communicate development and inequality on the BBC show the Joy of stats.  The BBC writes:

Despite its light and witty touch, the film nonetheless has a serious message – without statistics we are cast adrift on an ocean of confusion, but armed with stats we can take control of our lives, hold our rulers to account and see the world as it really is. What’s more, Hans concludes, we can now collect and analyse such huge quantities of data and at such speeds that scientific method itself seems to be changing.

Resilience Science has featured Hans Rosling’s great work with Gapminder many times before : Hans Rosling at TED, Google gapminder, has the world become a better place?, and visualizing development.  Furthermore, this visualization of the huge growth in health and wealth over the past centuries illustrates the point that my co-authors and I made in our Environmentalist’s paradox paper.