Debunking third-world myths with statistics

[The Monkey]

I came across this video through uni, thought I might share it, it's really interesting.

Ignore the guy's terrible accent.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

 

[Ravioli]

awesome

 

[Escaep]

Very interesting.

 

[Laivasse]

Very nice statistical presentation, even if it's essentially just promotion of some software. Here's a link to the Google gadget featuring that software, but you'll need some data from a spreadsheet to feed into it. I'm not sure where you'd get some of the data he's talking about towards the end. (Some more stuff at gapminder.org...)

Some of the comments are pretty incisive too (apart from the one about third world untermensch):

This guy is very entertaining, but he's DECEIVINGLY optimistic. If you look at all the African bubbles, they don't really move for 30 years. That's no progress for 30 years. AND they aren't just below everyone in health and wealth, they are waaay below everyone. 30% of children die in childhood!! Africa is not all the same, but when most of the countries there have horrible health and inequality (it's not a surprise that the rich Africans are actually doing better), the debate hasn't changed.
The graph about most people now being in the middle rather than in deep poverty - misleading. There is still about an equal number of people in the same level of desperate poverty. And Europe and North America have not stayed in place, but got further and further away from the desperate poor. Inequality has grown! The rich are still ****ing rich and the poor are still ****ing poor. There are no excuses.

The fact that a lot of it's on a logarithmic scale is a bit misleading too. He does mention that but he dismisses it instantly. That means that nations which appear to be half as prosperous/wealthy as the OECD countries are in fact only 1/10th as prosperous/wealthy. This isn't always significant because growth is often exponential anyway, but it still makes the inequalities look smaller than they are. It should be easier (and a higher priority) to move the people from the lower sectors into the middle of the prosperity chart than it is to boost people from the middle into the higher sectors, but that's not what's happening.

BTW, anyone looked at any of the other vids on that TED site? Any recommendations? Some of the titles look interesting but I don't have the time to check any out right now.

 

[Operational]

Yeah I've seen it before, great vid. And his accent isn't terrible, it's awesome!