The Joy of Stats

The text talks about the development of society and countries from 1810,
regarding people's life expectancy and wealth. This is an
argumentative text and it's made up of a short introduction, where
the speaker presents his work, the body of the text, where he
describes his thesis and argumentation, and the conclusion, where he
gives us the results of his study.

The first sentence of the text is a description of the topic of work and
he wants to focus the reader's attention on his study. The following
sentences give a justification to the previous statement and add
explanations (presence of the conjunction "and"). Later he
explains how he will work, justifying his possible default by the
sentence "I'm going to try something I've never done before".
This idea is also conveyed by the use of the intentional future
tense.

The first paragraph of the body of the text gives us all the instructions
need to understand the graphic he is going to see. The first sentence
describes the information given in the graphic, the following ones
say how to interpreter these data, they explain a consequence, also
conveyed by the conjunction "so".

The following paragraph explains the changes that happened from 1810 to
the First World War. Each statement is reinforced by the images of
the graphic, which show the effects described by the speaker, and is
explained by an example.

Then the speaker's attention is focused on the years from 1920 to 1948.
Here his observations are supported by the images, but the following
sentence, "1948 was a great year" is justified by examples.
This happens also in the following statement "the difference
between countries was wider than ever" where he justifies the
idea describing the position of each country in the graphic and
interpreting the data.

The next paragraph deals with the countries' progresses from 1948 up to
now. Here he likens the data with historical events, connecting
causes to consequences.

Then he analyzes the situation now. He expresses his idea at the beginning
and then he provides explanations using the data of the graphic
interpreting them.

In the conclusion the speaker expresses his idea about what he has
explained, reinforcing it with references to the graphic and to the
data he has explained.