In a pre-test at an undergraduate global health course at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, Hans Rosling asked students which countries had the highest child mortality rates in hopes to determine how much knowledge his students had on global health. He gave his students 5 pairs of countries, asking them which country in each pair had a higher child mortality rate. He found that his class scored an average of 1.8 correct answers out of 5, statistically scoring worse than chimpanzees, who scored an average of 2.5. He then gave the same test to his colleagues at Karolinska Institute and found that they scored an average of 2.4, scoring similarly to the chimpanzees. He believes that this wasn’t because of ignorance but because of preconceived ideas people had of the countries that were listed, specifically developing countries. The results from this research reveals the significance of preconceived notions and misconceptions and how they tend to give us a skewed view of the world.
Before the economic growth in Asia, health and wellness were vastly improved due to health education and family planning. In China, families started becoming smaller with people having longer life spans. This change helped stimulate economic growth, launching their development at a faster rate than countries who gained money before health. In his TED Talk, Rosling stated that you must first become healthy instead of wealthy.
According to Hans Rosling’s TED Talk, there is a strong linear relationship between child mortality and GDP per capita. The data showed that as GDP per capita increased, the child mortality rate decreased.
From 1962 to 2003, income distribution globally has changed drastically. Earlier, developed and developing countries had a distinct difference in income levels, with developed countries having higher income levels and developing countries having lower income levels. But over time, this divide between developed and developing countries has faded away. The data showed that in 2003, both developed and developing countries had wide ranges of income levels, with most of the global population falling in the middle of the scale.
Rosling uses statistics and data to demonstrate that we often generalize a region or country due to our preconceived notions and biases. Throughout the video, he emphasizes that there are large statistical variations in large regions and countries. He states that developing countries suffer from outdated stereotypes and that many of them are making technological improvements and developing over time. He uses data to describe human development with high spatial and temporal resolutions revealing the patterns of human development over the years. By having access to this data, we can educate more people and help reduce these misconceptions.
In my opinion, Rosling’s work with the Gapminder project is significant in contributing towards data science and human development because it made data more accessible to the public. With his work, he identified the common misconceptions people had and upgraded their worldviews as the world developed, providing them with facts and data. Rosling’s Gapminder is a remarkable achievement in that it allows data to become more global, allowing it to be used to advance human development.