Professor Hans Rosling has been credited by Microsoft’s Bill Gates as one of his inspirations to give so much to charity – the reason? Beautiful graphs.

Mr Rosling makes animated graphs, like the above graph comparing the UK and China over the last 200 years, for his non-profit organisation Gapminder.org.

Using data from international organisations such as the UN, he hopes his graphs will persuade people to give up their misconceptions about the modern world.

via BBC – Today.

I thought the style of graphic looked familiar to an aspect of Google Analyzer. Guess who bought Trendalyzer from Gapminder in March 2006? 

Here’s one looking at CO2 output of America and China

Many more videos of statistcs here, and you can use their tool to compare your own choice of statistics with Gapminder World.