How Not to Be Ignorant About the World

How much do we actually know about the world? Hans Rosling, who is famous because of his charts of global population and income data, demonstrates that you have a high statistical chance of being quite wrong about what you think you know. First you have to answer these three questions at the beginnen of his very interesting and funny TED Talk:

1. How did deaths per year from natural disasters change in the last century?

A. More than doubled
B. Remained about the same
C. Decreased to less than half

2. Women aged 30 spent how many years in school? (Men of same agent spent 8 years)

A. 7 years
B. 5 years
C. 3 years

3. In the last 20 years the percent of people living in extreme poverty has…?

A. Almost doubled
B. Remained about the same
C. Almost halved

Then watch this video (of course you can watch the complete TED Talk before):

Amazing: 200 Countries, 200 Years in 4 Minutes

Hans Rosling used augmented reality animation to explore his stats. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

Watch my interview with Mr. Hans Rosling

I interviewed Hans Rosling back in 2009 about the app called Yubby. An app that keeps your memories alive by capturing all photos and videos of events.