Hans Rosling, the Swedish statistician, global health advocate, and “edutainer,” passed away this week in Uppsala, according to his foundation, Gapminder.

Rosling was known worldwide for his innovative presentations of development trends and challenges to common notions about health and poverty. He founded Gapminder and created specialized visualization software in response to an observation that many students had surprising misconceptions about the state of the world, often overestimating the extent of problems in developing countries and underestimating the major changes that have taken place over the last half century.

Rosling made it his mission to combat this trend by spreading a “fact-based worldview that everyone can understand.” He did so through high energy, often funny presentations to students, TED audiences, and policymakers around the world.

His segment on the BBC show, “The Joy of Stats,” has more than 7.6 million views on YouTube:

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His TED talk, “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen,” has more than 3 million views:

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And “How Not to Be Ignorant About the World,” nearly a million:

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He used cardboard boxes to explain how religion affects (and does not affect) demography at a TED talk in Doha:

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And colorful storage bins, model airplanes, and sandals to explain global population growth in Cannes:

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In 2013, in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter on its development priorities, he launched a video about the mythical divide between the developing and developed world:

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In recent years, he used color blocks to explain the Syria displacement crisis:

And released shorter factoids on demographic history and the accuracy of population projections:

He also produced a longer feature on why the United Nations’ goal to end extreme poverty in 15 years isn’t as crazy as it sounds, though the video is unfortunately not embeddable.

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Thank you, Mr. Rosling, for helping so many of us “cross the river of myths.”

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