Lightning Round Answers Regarding Rosling’s Ted Talk

What was Hans Rosling’s observation regarding his comparative survey of students at the Karolinska Institute and the Chimpanzees (as well as the faculty who decide the Nobel Prize)? What is the significance of the results from his informal survey on preconceived ideas?
- When Rosling did a survey to see if students were able to guess the country with the highest child mortality rate out of five pairs of countries, he found that the students guessed less right on average (1.8/5) than either the Chimpanzees or the faculty who decide the Noble Prize, both of whom got half right. What he observed was that the students got less answers right than Chimpanzees who chose bananas representing countries at random, likely because the Chimpanzees don’t have preconceived ideas about countries, but the students did. This is significant because it shows that though we may think we know about the situation or development of a country, oftentimes this could be incorrect because what we know from headlines that stand out or outdated research doesn’t match the factual and current data. Thus, we must communicate the accurate information and ideas. The idea of not jumping to conlusions before we know the true facts or not giving in to preconceived notons can be applied to many areas, such as health, nutrion, and even personal relationships. What we can learn from Rosling’s informal study is that is is always important to acquaint ourselves with the facts and latest research on topics before moving forward, instead of acting based off of our preconceived ideas.
What type of change took place in Asia that preceded economic growth? Why was this type of change significant?
- Before economic growth occurred in Asia, social growth happened. This change was significant because without the social change, the economic change would not have occurred. In the example that Rosling gave, he said that Vietnam’s family size changed, which is an example of a societal shift. After the shift in societal norms, there is a snowball effect that leads to economic change as the country shifted from more of a command to amarket economy, and then their economy skyrocketed. If you think about developing countries, before significant economic changes occur and the country becomes a developed country, there needs to be a shift in the social norms themselves to allow for longer life expectancy, women entering the workforce, and other important factors that lead to economic growth.
In accordance with Hans Rosling’s TED talk, what is the relationship between child mortality and GDP per capita?
- According to the TED talk, there is a linear relationship between child mortality and GDP per capita. This relationship is an inverse linear relationship. Thus, as GDP per capita increases, child mortality decreases and as GDP per capita decreases, child mortality increases.
In terms of income distribution, how has the world changed from 1962 until 2003?
- Since 1962, the income distribution has evened out as more countries have become developed and the number of people living in the middle income range has grown. In the 1960s, the poorest countries were in Asia, and now those countries have developed more as they became “healthy then wealthy”, and there is not longer such a stark gap between the rich and the poor on a global scale.
What is the significance of how Hans Rosling uses data to describe global human development in terms of very high spatial and temporal resolutions? How does this relate to his previous observation regarding preconceived ideas?
- Rosling uses data presented visually as animated graphs to keep the audience engaged and also to easily show growth in countries over time. In terms of high spatial resolutions, Rosling dives into the specifics of countries and advises against using averages and generalizing data, as countries with similar culture or geographic area that we assume to be similar in terms of development markers (such as GDP per capita or child mortality) can oftentimes be drastically different. This relates to his previous observation about preconceived ideas because it hows that one reason we might have false preconceptions is because we as human beings are quick to generalize, such as thinking that all countries in Africa are developing, when some are actually developed countries and far wealthier than others in the same region. In order to accurately draw conclusions from data, the data must be highly contextualized to the specific country or region you are looking at, so that decisions can be made to specifically help the intended group of people.
In your opinion, why was Hans Rosling’s work with the Gapminder project significant in contributing towards advancing the intersection of data science and global human development?
- I believe that Hans Rosling’s work with the Gapminder project was significant because one of the main problems that we identified in the last article that we read about how data science can be used to boost human development was transparency about data. It is difficult to be able to use data science for a common good if private companies or governments are exploiting the data or not making it publicly available. The Gapminder project is seeking to boost the amount of data available to the public and to researchers so that they can more effectively and efficiently develop programs or ways to aid human development. In addition, having the data also be open to people who aren’t in scholarly settings leads to a better understanding of human development by normal people, which can help spur the next generation of data scientists and people interested in making the world a better place. I think that Rosling’s project isn’t just significant because it is helping to solve the issue of transparent and available data to be used with good intent, but also because it makes it so that common people can also learn from the data that is available and advance their own understanding.