Randy Pausch

WSJ Video about Last Lecture

Complete Last Lecture (at end of this article)

Randy Pauch's Website

from the Wall Street Journal:

CMU has a lecture series entitled "Last Lecture Series," in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. At the University of Northern Iowa, instructor Penny O'Connor recently titled her lecture "Get Over Yourself." At Cornell, Ellis Hanson, who teaches a course titled "Desire," spoke about sex and technology.

At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life.

See the short 2 minute video here. Read the article here. Below is the full video, 1 hour 44 minutes. That is long, but if you need some inspiration, watch it in increments.

Hans Rosling and GapMinder.Org

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

GapMinder.Org

From TED.Org:
Hans Rosling
Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.more ...

GapMinder.Org is a web site where Rosling makes many of the displays and tools available for viewing. It's a lot of fun to interact with the displays.

I discovered Rosling through the TED conference (see below) videos.

From the web site:
About this Talk
You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling's hands, global trends -- life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates -- become clear, intuitive and even playful.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

TED: Ideas worth spreading

My friend Joe Walters reminded me about the TED conference, and the wonderful videos of talks given at the conference that are available on the web. From the web site:

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers
and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 100 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under
a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted."

I will be posting some talks here as I watch them. They are really very impressive and worth the time spent watching them.