Hans Rosling No more boring data TEDTalks

Summary

The speaker, with a background in studying hunger in Africa, shares his experience teaching global development to Swedish students. He highlights the surprising lack of knowledge among top students about global health, even comparing their performance to that of chimpanzees in a quiz. The speaker introduces a software tool that visualizes global data, showing significant improvements in child mortality and family planning across various countries. He emphasizes the importance of accessible and searchable public data to foster a deeper understanding of global development and challenges the audience to rethink their perceptions of 'developing' and 'developed' countries.

Takeaways

• 😯 The speaker, after 20 years of studying hunger in Africa, began teaching global health at the Karolinska Institute, where they discovered students' knowledge of global development was lacking.
• 📊 A pretest revealed that Swedish students knew less about global child mortality rates than would be expected by chance, highlighting a need for better global education.
• 🌍 The speaker developed software to visualize global data, showing the world's countries as bubbles with size representing population and axes for fertility rate and life expectancy.
• 📉 Over time, there's been a significant shift in global health and development, with many countries improving life expectancy and reducing family sizes.
• 🌐 The concept of 'developing countries' is challenged as the world's economic and health distribution is more nuanced than a simple rich-poor divide.
• 💸 The world's income distribution is not a gap but a spectrum, with most people falling in the middle, challenging the notion of a stark divide between rich and poor.
• 📈 Asia, particularly countries like China and Vietnam, has seen tremendous social and economic changes, with significant improvements in life expectancy and family planning.
• 🌱 The speaker emphasizes the importance of context when discussing global development, as there is vast variation within regions like Africa and South Asia.
• 🔍 There's a call for making publicly funded statistical data more accessible and searchable to facilitate better understanding and utilization of global information.
• 🌟 The speaker concludes with optimism about the potential for technology, such as affordable computers and improved data access, to contribute to global flattening and development.

Q & A

What was the speaker's initial task?

The speaker's initial task was to teach global development to Swedish undergraduate students, particularly at the Karolinska Institute.

What did the speaker discover from the pretest given to students?

The speaker discovered that Swedish top students statistically knew significantly less about the world than chimpanzees would by random chance.

What was the main issue the speaker identified with the students' knowledge?

The main issue was not ignorance, but rather preconceived ideas and misconceptions about global health and development.

How did the speaker visualize the data on child mortality and fertility rates?

The speaker used a software that displayed data with bubbles representing countries, where the size of the bubble indicated population, and axes represented fertility rates and life expectancy at birth.

What significant change has occurred in global health since 1962?

Since 1962, there has been a significant change in global health where many countries have moved towards having smaller families and longer life expectancies.

What was the 'miracle' mentioned in the context of Bangladesh?

The 'miracle' referred to the significant improvement in Bangladesh's health and family planning in the 1980s, leading to a notable upward shift in the country's position on the fertility and life expectancy graph.

How did the speaker compare the development of Vietnam and the United States?

The speaker compared Vietnam and the United States by showing how Vietnam moved towards smaller families and longer life expectancies, similar to the United States, but at a different pace and time.

What is the main challenge the speaker sees in discussing global development?

The main challenge is the vast differences within regions, such as Africa, which makes it difficult to generalize solutions or strategies for development.

Why did the speaker start the nonprofit venture called Gapminder?

The speaker started Gapminder to liberate publicly-funded data and make it searchable and easily understandable through visual animations, thereby allowing for more informed discussions and decisions on global development.

What is the speaker's vision for the future of global data accessibility?

The speaker envisions a future where publicly-funded data is freely accessible, searchable, and easily visualized, enabling a deeper understanding of global trends and development.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 Global Health Education and Preconceived Ideas

The speaker reflects on their experience teaching global development to Swedish undergraduate students, drawing from their 20 years of research on hunger in Africa. They initiated a global health course at the Karolinska Institute, but were surprised by the students' lack of knowledge on global health issues, as revealed by a pretest. The students' incorrect assumptions about child mortality rates in various countries were compared to the performance of chimpanzees, highlighting a need for better communication of global data. The speaker then introduces a software tool that visualizes global health data, showing how countries have evolved in terms of life expectancy and fertility rates since 1962. The tool challenges the outdated 'us versus them' mentality and emphasizes the importance of context-specific solutions in global health.

05:01

📊 Income Distribution and Social Change

This paragraph discusses the distribution of global income and the social changes that have occurred since the 1960s. The speaker debunks the myth of a disappearing gap between the rich and the poor, showing that while there is still a significant income disparity, the majority of the world's population falls in the middle. They highlight the dramatic social changes in Asia, particularly in Vietnam, where family planning and market economy reforms led to significant improvements in life expectancy and family size, paralleling developments in the United States. The speaker also touches on the importance of contextualizing economic discussions, as the same strategies for wealth distribution and social welfare do not apply uniformly across different regions and countries.

10:01

🌐 Variability in Development Across Regions

The speaker explores the variability in development within different regions of the world, emphasizing that generalizations about entire continents can be misleading. They discuss the diversity within Africa, South Asia, and the Arab states, pointing out that each region contains a wide range of economic and social conditions. The speaker also compares the development trajectories of South Korea and Brazil, illustrating how countries can move in different directions despite similar starting points. They argue for a more nuanced understanding of global development, where health and education investments are as important as economic growth, using the example of the United Arab Emirates to show how investments in health can lead to significant improvements in child survival rates.

15:01

💡 Unlocking the Potential of Public Data

In this paragraph, the speaker advocates for the liberation of publicly-funded data to better inform and educate the public about global trends. They criticize the lack of accessibility and searchability of statistical data, which is often hidden away in databases. The speaker shares their experience founding Gapminder, a nonprofit venture aimed at making global data more accessible and understandable through visualization. They envision a future where data is freely available and easily searchable, allowing for the creation of informative and engaging visualizations that can help policymakers, educators, and the general public better understand and address global challenges.

20:04

🎨 The Value of Creative Ideas and Vision

The final paragraph shifts focus to the importance of nurturing creative ideas and artistic vision. While it is not directly related to the previous discussions on global health and data accessibility, it serves as a metaphor for the potential of harnessing data and technology to create meaningful change. The speaker suggests that just as artistic visions can be transformed into great works, so too can innovative ideas in data visualization and global health education lead to significant advancements in our understanding and approach to global issues.

Keywords

💡Global Development

Global development refers to the process of improving economic, social, and environmental conditions worldwide. In the video, the speaker discusses teaching global development to students, highlighting the importance of understanding global health and economic disparities. This concept is central to the video's theme of understanding and visualizing global progress and challenges.

💡Child Mortality

Child mortality is the death of children under a certain age, typically under five. It is a key indicator of a country's health and development status. The video script uses child mortality as a measure to compare countries and to demonstrate the lack of knowledge among students about global health issues, as illustrated by the pretest results.

💡Preconceived Ideas

Preconceived ideas are preexisting notions or biases that people have before being confronted with facts or evidence. The speaker in the video points out that the problem is not merely ignorance but also the preconceived ideas that students and even professors have about the world, which can hinder understanding of global realities.

💡Fertility Rate

The fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman. It is a demographic indicator used to understand population growth and family planning trends. In the video, fertility rate is one of the axes used in the bubble chart to show the differences in family size across countries, illustrating the contrast between 'Western' and 'third-world' perceptions.

💡Life Expectancy

Life expectancy is the average number of years a person is expected to live, based on the year of their birth. It is a significant measure of a country's health and living conditions. The video uses life expectancy at birth as another axis in the bubble chart to compare countries, emphasizing the disparities in health outcomes globally.

💡Industrialized Countries

Industrialized countries are nations with advanced economies, characterized by large-scale industrial production and infrastructure. In the video, the speaker contrasts industrialized countries, which typically have smaller families and longer life expectancies, with developing countries, highlighting the historical divide in global health and economic conditions.

💡Developing Countries

Developing countries are nations with emerging economies that are in the process of industrialization and modernization. The video discusses the changes in developing countries over time, particularly in terms of family planning and health improvements, challenging the simplistic 'us and them' view of global development.

💡Gapminder

Gapminder is a non-profit venture founded by the speaker to visualize global statistics and promote a fact-based world view. The video describes Gapminder's software that animates data to make it accessible and understandable, aiming to bridge the gap between public data and the general public's understanding of global trends.

💡Data Visualization

Data visualization is the graphical representation of information and data. It helps in making complex data more accessible and understandable. The video emphasizes the importance of data visualization in communicating global development trends, using Gapminder's bubble charts and animations as examples of effective data presentation.

💡Income Distribution

Income distribution refers to the way income is spread among individuals or households within an economy. The video discusses the global income distribution, highlighting the myth of a gap between rich and poor and showing how most of the world's population falls in the middle-income range, with significant implications for our understanding of economic development.

💡Publicly Funded Data

Publicly funded data is information collected and maintained by government agencies or public institutions, often for the public good. The video argues for the need to make such data freely accessible and searchable to enable broader use and understanding, particularly in the context of global development and policy-making.

Highlights

The speaker took on the task of teaching global development to Swedish undergraduate students after spending 20 years studying hunger in Africa.

Swedish top students scored significantly less on a world knowledge pretest compared to chimpanzees, revealing preconceived ideas rather than ignorance.

The speaker used data visualization to show global trends, with each bubble representing a country and metrics such as fertility rate and life expectancy displayed on the axes.

In 1962, the world was divided between industrialized countries with small families and long lives, and developing countries with large families and short lives.

The visualization showed that countries like China, India, and Latin American nations improved in both health and family size over the years.

Bangladesh's 'miracle' in the 1980s was highlighted, where family planning significantly improved health and reduced family sizes.

The speaker showcased how Vietnam, through family planning and economic reform, achieved the same life expectancy and family size in 2003 as the U.S. had in 1974.

There is no longer a clear gap between rich and poor countries; instead, most people fall somewhere in the middle of the global income distribution.

The speaker emphasized the importance of using accurate global data, showing significant variability within regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

The role of publicly funded data was highlighted, but much of it remains inaccessible to the public, with databases locked behind passwords and paywalls.

Gapminder, a nonprofit founded by the speaker, aims to make global data more accessible and understandable through innovative visual tools.

A significant finding was that health improvements often precede wealth increases, as demonstrated by comparing countries like South Korea and Brazil.

The speaker demonstrated how income distribution in China has shifted since 1970, with China's income now overlapping with the U.S., highlighting the country's rapid growth.

The speaker argued that data visualization is a crucial tool for understanding complex global patterns, making it easier for students, policymakers, and the public to engage with data.

The presentation concluded by emphasizing the need to make publicly funded data more freely accessible and the role of technology, such as the $100 laptop, in bridging digital and educational divides.

Transcripts

about 10 years ago I took on the task to

teach global development to Swedish

undergraduate students that was after

having spent about 20 years together

with African institution studying hunger

in Africa so I was sort of expected to

know a little about the world and i

started in our medical university

karolinska institute an undergraduate

course called global health but when you

get that opportunity you get little

nervous I thought these students coming

to us actually have the highest grade

you can get in Swedish college system so

I thought maybe they know everything i'm

going to teach them about so i did a

pretest when they came and one of the

question from which i learned a lot was

this one which country has the highest

child mortality of these five pairs and

I put them together so that in each pair

of country one has twice the child

mortality of the other and this means

that it's much bigger the difference

than the uncertainty of the data I won't

put yer to test here but it's turkey

which is high as their Poland Russia

Pakistan and South Africa and these were

the results of the Swedish students I

did it so I got the confidence interval

which was pretty narrow and I got happy

of course at one point eight right

answer after five possible that means

that there was a place for a professor

of international health and for my

course but one light late night when I

was compiling the report I really

realized my discovery I have shown that

Swedish top students know statistically

significantly less about the world than

the chimpanzees

because the chimpanzee would score half

right if I gave him two bananas with Sri

Lankan turkey they would be right half

of the cases but the students are not

that the problem for me was not

ignorance it was preconceived ideas I

did also an unfair unethical study of

the professor's of the Karolinska

Institute that hands out the nobel prize

in medicine and they are on par with the

chimpanzee there so this is where I

realized that there was really a need to

communicate because the data or what's

happening in the world and the child

health of every country is very well

aware so we did this software which

displays it like this every bubble here

is a country this country over here is

this is China this is India the size of

the bubble is the population and on this

axis here I put fertility rate because

my students what they said when they

looked upon the world and I asked them

what do you really think about the world

huh well I first discovered that the

textbook was Tintin mainly and and they

said the world is still we and them and

we is Western world and them is third

world and what do you mean with Western

world I said well that's long life in

small family and third world is short

life in large family so this is what I

could display here I put fertility rate

here number of children per woman one

two three four up to about eight

children per woman we have very good

data since nineteen sixty-two 1960 about

on the size of families in all countries

the error margin is narrow here I put

life expectancy at Birth from 30 years

in some countries up to about 70 years

and 1962 that was really a group of

countries here that was industrialized

countries and they had small families

and long lives and these were the

developing countries they had large

families and they had relatively short

lives now what has happened since

nineteen sixty-two we want to see the

change or the students right it's still

two types of countries or have these

developing countries got smaller

families and they live here or have they

got longer lives and live up there let's

see we stop the world and this is all UN

statistic that has been a

here we go can you see that it's China

they're moving up against better health

are improving there or the green Latin

American countries they are moving

towards smaller families your yellow

ones here are the Arabic countries and

they get larger families but they no

longer life but not larger families the

Africans are the green down here they

still remain here this is India

Indonesia is moving on pity fest and in

the 80s here you have Bangladesh still

among the African countries there but

now Bangladesh it's a miracle that

happens in the 80s the mom start to

promote family planning and they move up

into that corner and in 90s we have the

terrible HIV epidemic that takes down

the life expectancy of the African

countries and all the rest of the mall

moves up into the corner where we have

long lives and small family and we have

a completely new world

let me make a comparison directly

between United States of America and

Vietnam 1964 America had small families

and long life vietnam had large families

and short lives and this is what happens

the data during the war indicate that

even with all the death that was an

improvement of life expectancy by the

end of the year the family planning

started in Vietnam and they went for

smaller families and the United States

up there is getting for longer life

keeping family size and in the 80s now

they give up communist planning and they

go for market economy and it moves

faster even in social life and today we

have in Vietnam the same life expectancy

and the same family size here in Vietnam

19 2003 as in the United States 1974 by

the end of the war I think we all if we

don't look in the data we underestimate

the tremendous change in Asia which was

in social change before we saw the

economical change so let's move over to

another way here in which we could

display the distribution in the world of

the income this is the world

distribution of income of people one

dollar $10 or 100 dollar per day there's

no gap between rich and poor any longer

this is a myth there's a little hump ear

but there are people all the way and if

we look where the income ends up the

income this is one hundred percent of

worlds annual income and the rich is

twenty percent they take out of that

about seventy-four percent and the poor

is twenty percent they take about two

percent and this shows that the concept

developing countries is extremely

doubtful we sort of think about aid like

these people here giving aid to these

people here but in the middle we have

most a world population and they have

now twenty four percent of income we

heard it in other forms and who are who

are these these where are the different

countries

I can show you Africa this is Africa ten

percent of world population most

impoverished is osed the rich country

the country club of the UN and they are

over here on this side and quite an

overlap between Africa and OECD and this

is Latin America it has everything on

this earth from the poorest to the

richest in Latin America and on top of

that we can put East Europe we can put

East Asia and we could South Asia and

how did it look like if we go back in

time to about 1970 then there was more

of a hump and we have most who lived in

absolute poverty were Asians the problem

in the world was the poverty in Asia and

if I now let the world move forward you

will seem that wild population increase

there are hundreds of millions in Asia

are getting out of poverty and some

others get into poverty and this is the

pattern we have today and the best

projection from the World Bank is that

this will happen and we will not have a

divided world we have most people in the

middle of course it's a logarithmic

scale here but our concept of economy is

growth with percent we look upon it as a

possibility of percent increase if I

change this and I take gdp per capita

instead of family income and I turn

these individual data into regional data

of gross domestic product and I take the

region's down here the size of the

bubble is still the population and you

have the OECD there and you have

sub-saharan Africa there and we take off

the Arab states they're coming both from

Africa from Asia and we put them

separately and we can expand this axis

and I can give it a new dimension here

by adding the social values their child

survival now I have money on that axis

and I have the possibility of children

to survive there in some countries 99.7

percent of children survived 25 years of

age others only 70 and here it seems

that this is a gap between OECD Latin

America East Europe East Asia Arab

states south asia and sub-saharan africa

the linearity is very

strong between child survival and money

but let me split sub-saharan Africa

health is there and better health is up

there I can go here and I can split

sub-saharan Africa into its countries

and when it bursts the size of each

country bubble it's the size of the

population Sierra Leone the down there

now reaches up there now reaches was the

first country to get away with trade

barriers and they could sell the sugar

they could sell their textiles on equal

terms as the people in Europe and North

America there's a huge difference

between Africa and Ghana's here in the

middle in Sierra Leone a humanitarian

aid here in uganda development aid here

time to invest there you can go for

holiday and it's a tremendous variation

within africa which we very often make

that it's equal everything i can split

south asia here india's the big bubble

in the middle but huge difference

between Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and I

can spit Arab states holiday same

climate same culture same religion huge

difference even between neighbors Yemen

civil war united arab emirate money

which was quite equally and well-used

not as the memphis and that includes all

the children of the foreign workers who

are in the country data is often better

than you think many people say data is

bad there is an uncertainty margin but

we can see the difference here cambodia

singapore the differences are much

bigger than the weakness of the data

east europe soviet economy for a long

time but they come out of the ten years

very very differently and there is Latin

America today we don't have to go to

Cuba to find a healthy country in Latin

America chili will have a lower child

mortality thank you but within some few

years from now and here we have high

income countries in OECD and we get the

whole pattern here of the world which is

more or less like like this and if we

look at it how it looks the world in

1960 it starts to move 1960 this is

matzo tomb he brought health to China

and then he died and then then shopping

came and brought money to China and

brought them into the mainstream again

and we have seen how countries move in

different directions like this so it's

sort of sort of difficult to get an

example country which shows the pattern

of the world but I would like to bring

you back to about here at 1960 and i

would like to compare south korea which

is this one with with brazil which is

this one the label went away from me

here and I would like to compare Uganda

which is there and I can run it forward

like this and you can see how South

Korea is making a very very fast

advancement whereas Brazil is much

slower and if we move back again here

and we put on trails on them like this

you can see again that the speed of

development is very very different and

the countries are moving more or less in

the same rate as money and health but it

seems you can move much faster if you're

healthy first than if you are wealthy

first and to show that you can put on

the way of united arab emirate they came

from here a mineral country they catch

all the oil they got all the money but

health cannot be bought at the

supermarket you have to invest in health

you have to get kids into schooling you

have to train health staff you have to

educate the population and sheikh zayed

did that in a fairly good way and in

spite of falling oil prices he brought

this country up here so we got much more

mainstream appearance of the world where

all countries tend to use their money

better than they used in the past now

this is more or less if you look at if

you look at the average data of the

countries they are like this now that's

dangerous to use average data because

there's such a lot of difference within

so if I go and look here we can see that

Uganda that today is where South Korea

was nineteen sixty if i split Uganda

there's quite a difference with in

Uganda these are the quintiles of Uganda

the richest twenty percent of your

gardens are there the poorest are down

there if i split south africa it's like

this and if i go down and look at

Nigeria where there was such a terrible

famine lost Lee it's like this the

twenty percent poorest of Nigeria is out

here and the twenty percent richest of

South Africa is there and yet we tend to

discuss on what solutions they should be

in Africa everything in this world

exists in Africa and you can't discuss

universal access to HIV for that

quintile appear with the same strategy

as down here the improvement of the

world must be highly contextualized and

it's not relevant to have it on regional

level we must be much more detailed we

find that students get very excited when

they can use this and even more

policymakers and the corporate sectors

would like to see see how the world is

changing now why doesn't this take place

why are we not using the data we have we

have data in the United Nation in the

National Statistical agencies and in

universities another non-governmental

organization because the data is hidden

down in the databases and the public is

there and the internet is there but we

have still not used it effectively all

that information was so changing in the

world does not include publicly funded

statistics there are some webpages like

this you know but they take some

nourishment down from the databases but

people put prices on them stupid

passwords and boring statistics and this

won't work

so what is needed we have the databases

it's not a new database you need we have

wonderful design tools and more and more

I added up here so we started a

nonprofit venture which we called

linking data to design we call it

Gapminder from london underground where

they warn you mind the gap so we thought

cap mind was appropriate and we started

to write software which could link the

data like this and it wasn't that

difficult it took some person years and

we are produced animations you can take

a data set and put it there we are

liberating you and data some fue UN

organizations some campus except that

their databases can go out on the world

but what we really need is of course a

search function a search function where

we can copy the data up to a searchable

format and get it out in the world and

what do we hear when we go around I've

done anthropology on the main

statistical units everyone says it's

impossible this can't be done our

information is so peculiar in detail so

that cannot be searched as other can be

searched we cannot give the data free to

the students free to the entrepreneurs

of the world but this is what we would

like to see isn't it the publicly-funded

data is down here and we would like

flowers to grow out on the net and one

of the crucial point is to make them

searchable and then people can use the

different design tool to animate it

there and I have a pretty good news for

you I have a good news that the present

new head of un statistic he doesn't say

it's impossible he only says we can't do

it and that's a quite clever guy

so we can see a lot happening in data in

the coming years we will be able to look

at income distributions in completely

new ways this is the income distribution

of China 1970 this is the income

distribution of the United States 1970

almost no overlap almost no overlap and

what has happened what has happened is

this the China is growing its not so

equal any longer and it's appearing here

overlooking the United States almost

like a ghost isn't it it's pretty scared

but I think it's very important to have

have all this information we need we

need really to see it and instead of

looking at this I would like to end up

by showing the Internet users per 1,000

and this software we access about 500

variables from all the countries quite

easily it takes some time to change for

this but on the accesses you can quite

easily get any variable you would like

to have and the thing would be to get up

the database is free to get them

searchable and with a second click to

get them into the graphic formats where

you can instantly understand them now

the statisticians doesn't like it

because they say that this will not this

will not show the the reality we have to

have statistical analytical methods but

this is hypothesis generating I n now

with a world where the internet are

coming the number of Internet users are

going up like this this is the GDP per

capita and it's a new technology coming

in but in amazingly how well it fits to

the economy of the countries that's why

the 100-dollar computer will be so

important but it's a nice tenders it's

as if the world is flattening off isn't

it these countries are lifting more than

the economy and will be very interesting

to fall of this over the year as I would

like you to be able to

with all the publicly funded data thank

you very much what if great ideas

weren't cherished what if they carried

no importance or held no value there is

a place where artistic vision is

protected where inspired design ideas

live on to become ultimate driving

machines

you