The Joy of Stats: Hans Rosling’s Rollercoaster Ride Through the Wonderful World of Statistics

in Math | January 3rd, 2011

Last month, we post­ed a daz­zling clip – Hans Rosling trac­ing health trends with­in 200 coun­tries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, all in 4 min­utes. Pret­ty quick­ly you saw why Rosling has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for pre­sent­ing data in extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive ways. The video was an out­take from a BBC doc­u­men­tary called “The Joy of Stats,” which is now ful­ly avail­able online. It runs 59 min­utes and takes you on a “roller­coast­er ride through the won­der­ful world of sta­tis­tics.” When it’s all over, you’ll nev­er doubt that stats can change how you under­stand our world.

The Joy of Stats will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Birth to 10 Years Old in Time Lapse Video

in Life | January 3rd, 2011

The Milky Way Over Texas. The Auro­ra Bore­alis over Nor­way. Decem­ber’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse. Last week’s bliz­zard. What beau­ty can’t be cap­tured in time lapse pho­tog­ra­phy? Per­haps ten years of human life and devel­op­ment? Not so. No if the par­ents reli­gious­ly take a pho­to a day. Then, voila, human growth in time lapse…

via Der­ren­Brown

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Thomas Edison Recites “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in Early Voice Recording

in History, Science, Technology | January 3rd, 2011

In the late 1870s, Thomas Edi­son, Amer­i­ca’s pro­lif­ic inven­tor, per­fect­ed the phono­graph and cap­tured a very ear­ly record­ing of the human voice – his own voice recit­ing the still pop­u­lar nurs­ery rhyme, Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb. (Get mp3 here.) Lat­er, the Edi­son cylin­der also record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty Russ­ian com­pos­er Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) talk­ing with oth­er musi­cians in a light moment.

The Edi­son cylin­der was actu­al­ly pre­ced­ed by anoth­er sound-record­ing device, the pho­nau­to­graph, invent­ed by Édouard-Léon Scott de Mar­t­inville in 1857. Not long ago, sci­en­tists from the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry extract­ed a record­ing not heard in 150 years, a voice singing the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)

Bike Tricks Cour­tesy of Thomas Edi­son

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Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree: The Animated Film Narrated by Shel Himself (1973)

in Film, K-12, Literature | January 1st, 2011

Back in 1964, Shel Sil­ver­stein wrote The Giv­ing Tree, a wide­ly loved chil­dren’s book now trans­lat­ed into more than 30 lan­guages. It’s a sto­ry about the human con­di­tion, about giv­ing and receiv­ing, using and get­ting used, need­i­ness and greed­i­ness, although many fin­er points of the sto­ry are open to inter­pre­ta­tion. Today, we’re rewind­ing the video­tape to 1973, when Sil­ver­stein’s lit­tle book was turned into a 10 minute ani­mat­ed film (now added to our free movie col­lec­tion). Sil­ver­stein nar­rates the sto­ry him­self and also plays the har­mon­i­ca.… which brings us to his musi­cal tal­ents. Don’t miss Sil­ver­stein, also a well known song­writer, appear­ing on The John­ny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Sil­ver­stein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-edi­tor of the phi­los­o­phy blog/podcast The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life for send­ing these along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Shel Sil­ver­stein Reads His Poem ‘Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too’ in Ani­mat­ed Video

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.