What you see should only be part of what you get...

This week the learned Richard Hall sent me a link to the TED presentation given a few years ago by Hans Rosling, and like most people who see it I was blown away.

Hence it was also no surprise when it got me thinking about the volume of research data I've been exposed to and how literally and absolutely it all seems to be interpreted.

'X correlates to Y' still seems to be the adage, but what sets Rosling and Messrs Levitt & Dubner of Freakomonics fame is the desire to sweat the data, to look for patterns, to uncover things that were not obvious but a whole lot more meaningful.

Now I can hear my colleague Nicole Hooper explaining that this is the difference between a commercial approach and a scientific one, but isn't that the point? Shouldn't we, like Rosling be pushing for new ways to analyse and express the research we do to lead to the killer insights, the marketing edge which will make the difference between launching a winner and an also ran?

Rosling, hell anyone should be applauded for not only crunching the numbers, but making the effort to communicate it to those around him in an engaging, immersive and dynamic way...


New technology will make analysing data easier and communicating data much more engaging (checkout this page at mashable), all thats required is the desire to discover something more...