I recently took a super interesting class on demographics and the fight against poverty. Our teacher put forward the Swedish professor and doctor Hans Rosling. You probably never heard of this guy and neither did I.
To summarise it real quick: Rosling is crazy about data. Data about global development: health care, income, education, life expectancy, natural disasters, access to clean water,... And so he founded the Gapminder Foundation. This foundation aims to get rid of common myths on global development by using data. This data is put in clear, interactive (bubble)graphs so that noobs don't have to dug deep into academic graphs to regain a correct view on global development. On Gapminder, the bubbles represent countries and during the animation you see the bubbles moving in the positive direction.
©gapminder.org, in 1800 we were all poor but with the increase of income (and education) over the next period of time the amount of children per woman is decreasing. Better income means fewer children.
Such graphs are necessary because, according to Hans Rosling and his statistics, most of us have an image of the world based on 20 years ago. During these two decennia the world has changed in the better way. So we need to change our view as well to make good decisions, to have correct opinions and thoughts and not to lose hope.
Stuck in time
To be honest, at the start of this class, I didn't think my world view was so very wrong. I thought I was pretty up to date: my geography book from high school couldn't have more population pyramids and during college I was buried under facts and figures about sociology in urban cities. Until we had a little check-up in class... yeah... I failed miserably. Curious about your knowledge? Do the Factfulness quiz.
One sample question to prep you:
In the past 20 years, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has been ...?
A. Almost doubled
B. More or less stayed the same
C. Almost halved
The answer will be at the end of this post!
The best stats you've ever seen
The Swedish professor became famous with his TED-talk: The Best Stats You've Ever Seen. He did several TED-talks and became quite famous on the web. Global population growth, box by box is underrated but such an interesting talk as well. Hans nickname became the Jedi master of visualisation as he is a pro in explaining his stats to the main public. So even if you suck at statistics, you will still understand the picture.
The 10 rules of the thumb
There's more! Rosling wrote a book about this global misunderstanding: Factfullness, co-authored by Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling. This humorously insider explains the instincts that cause wrong global development visions. The author summarise them as the 10 rules of the thumb. Apart from the book, these rules are also available on the big web. Keeping these rules in the back of your mind, will help you better recognise when your brain jumps to conclusions on global development that aren't right or dated. Use the link to get more information on each of the rule.
The book also gives a glimpse on Hans' life from doctor to king of statistics. It's a brilliant book with some important lessons from a man who saw for himself how West Africa managed to come out of the Ebola outbreak as a stronger region.
Sadly, Hans Rosling passed away in 2017. He learned many people to see the world in data and, thanks to Gapminder, this will not be forgotten. Like he said himself: "A fact-based worldview is more useful for navigating life, just like an accurate GPS is more useful for finding your way in the city. When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems—and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better."
Stay optimistic!
(The right answer was C)
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