Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.

Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.

Hans Rosling typically would go into the room, and he would ask the audience questions. Often they had to answer them with clickers or raising their hands or something. We get [data] wrong because 50 years ago that wasn't the case and because we haven't had these graphics we don't realize that over the last 30, 40, 50 years things have changed dramatically. And you see how the world has been getting a better, safer, more homogeneous place. It just has.

A PhD in Mathematics is three years of guessing it wrong, plus one week of getting it right and writing a dissertation.

We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics).

In fact, we tend to think things have been getting much worse. In fact, over the last 50 years, almost everything in the world on a global scale has got better. And the way that Hans [ Rosling] did this - it was very good.

I've never met Hans Rosling, but I just knew him through his many YouTube videos, and they were absolute dynamite.