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.