Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes 270
kkleiner writes "A professor of international health in Sweden, Hans Rosling has a long history of exploring the facts and figures that surround our changing world. In the a segment of the BBC series, Rosling gives one of his most famous lectures with a new twist. Using 120,000+ bits of data and augmented reality, the exuberant professor takes us through the last 200 years of global history and its uneven growth of wealth and health." This is really worth watching. Seriously.
And... (Score:4, Interesting)
...our growth is almost entirely based on the use of oil for transportation, new materials, pesticides, fertilizers, construction equipment, etc, etc, etc. It's going to be messy when it starts to run dry.
Re:And... (Score:5, Interesting)
What horrible graphics (Score:2, Interesting)
I applaud what he is trying to do. Seriously. At the same time, this guy needs to read a bit more about data presentation.
First of all, the background setting for this talk is a terrible choice. The windows make it difficult to see the individual plots, and what's up with the large ball of lights off to the right? Ugh.
His y-axis is also distorting the truth. With the y-axis beginning at 25 and going to 75, he is conveying a huge lie factor [infovis-wiki.net] in the progress.
He needs to read Tufte [wikipedia.org].
Terminal Terminology (Score:4, Interesting)
Great video and argument for the need for well-made methods for present data, but there are a couple of issues I think need to be addressed with this video:
-One is that I'm seeing quite a few misinterpretations on life expectancy in various comments, and though not expressly stated, even in the implications suggested by the professor himself.
It is important to keep in mind that life expectancy is almost always calculated as the full blown all-inclusive average of "age-when-people-died". While this may seem like a very standard indicator for the overall health of a nation, it is actually highly influenced by natal and infant mortality rates.
Of-course, that's not to say that being able to keep a baby alive shouldn't be a measure of a nation's overall healthiness, however the misinterpretation comes in when there are comments relating this life-expectancy to vaccines and whatnot. It is a common urge (one that seems implicitly shared by the professor in the video) to associate mankind's technological achievements with a longer fuller life, but to discount all of the carcinogens, obesity, diabetes, and other newfound sources of death that have come hand-in-hand with technology is a very hasty move.
And for those that counter-argue about the elimination of disease, yes, do note the huge dips in life-expectancy in the plot as time progresses; but also observe that these dips, representing epidemics, only last for 2-5 years, and the population rebounds. My point is regarding the baseline equilibrium "life expectancy".
As far as I know, studies have shown that it doesn't matter whether you were born as a healthy baby back then versus now, as a person's life expectancy when controlled for infant mortality, has remained basically steady, with improvements in healthcare cancelling out all the crap we try to kill ourselves with. It's just that we manage to keep more babies alive til they get cancer.
-Secondly, I wanted to comment on the professor's utopian endgame of every country landing in the happy zone that is wealthy and healthy. It was common knowledge among the political big boys towards the end of Chinese communism (the economic form, not the social one. You can argue whatever you want if you feel like being ignorant, but a person driving an important Porsche Cayenne next to someone pulling a rickshaw isn't quite the equality communism originally set out for) that if China had the same proportion of its population become middle class as America, there wouldn't be enough natural resources (steel, fuel, etc.) on the entire planet to give every family an automobile.
My point there is that overall wealth, while better for a country and its individuals, is definitely not better for the planet. And given it's subjective nature, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone would actually be "wealthy". If a rich nation could buy something now that a poor one cannot afford, but in the future both countries could afford it, it would just make that item in question cost more due to increased demand. Effectively, every country being "wealthy" is exactly the same as every country being "poor". We could just make America and most of Europe as poor as a developing nation, and technically every country would be "wealthy". The quality of life wouldn't necessarily improve in that case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Interpretation_of_life_expectancy [wikipedia.org]
Re:shows economics and politics over time (Score:4, Interesting)
Compared to Mao, Hitler and Stalin and Caesar and Po Pot were rank amateurs.
Biggest difference: (Score:4, Interesting)
China is building the largest sustainable energy projects in the world with the fossil fuel energy they have left.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/26/china-invests-solar-power-renewable-energy-environment [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Sigh... graphs.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you start the axes at zero? First off, as you note, the income axis is logarithmic, and so cannot go to zero anyway. As for life expectancy, zero would be a meaningless label. It's impossible for a country to have a life expectancy of zero. It is entirely appropriate to set the minimum value for an axis at the minimum value which has ever been recorded. The difference between a life expectancy of 40 and 75 is enormous, and I do not find the presentation to be in any way misleading.
Your second issue, the logarithmic axis for money, is debatable either way. Given that incomes have generally risen exponentially (in the US, an increase of about 2% per year for the last 200 years), a linear scale would show accelerating income growth for wealthier countries. It strikes me that this would be more misleading than use of a logarithmic axis. If you usually think of income growth as linear, maybe it's your thinking, rather than his graph, which is mistaken.
For the third issue, there is something called "Purchase Power Parity" which corrects for the effect you're talking about. The presentation doesn't discuss whether his income figures are adjusted for PPP or not. Contrary to your assumption, the figures clearly are at least adjusted for inflation (given that his $400 minimum would have been a princely sum in 1810, far above any country's per capita average), and if he's adjusted for inflation, I see no reason not to believe that he's adjusted for PPP as well. If he hasn't adjusted for PPP, then I agree that's something that should have been done, but it in no way alters his fundamental point. PPP reduces income inequality, but in no way eliminates it.
For the fourth issue, without his enthusiastic presentation, it's just a graph. There's a time and a place for cold, sober, "just the facts" presentations, and that is textbooks. In less academic settings, it's entirely appropriate to use enthusiastic explanations to show people why something matters.
Re:And... (Score:2, Interesting)
Denying reality? Why not ask the democrats, whom had effective filibuster control of both houses of congress since 2000 and full control since 2006. You know that the republicans actively tried to prevent the collapse several times in 2004 and 2006 yet were blocked by democrats, right?
Or, more specifically, ask (D) Barney Frank [youtube.com],:
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis situation. The more people in my judgment exaggerate the threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. Even if there were a problem, the federal government does not bail them out. But the more pressure there is, the less we see in terms of affordable housing."
Re:What horrible graphics (Score:4, Interesting)
It would also be kinda nice if whenever he said 'look at this!' they didn't zoom in on his face, so making it impossible to see what we were supposed to be looking at.
Re:Family size (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you've reversed cause and effect in your analysis.
One important counterargument to this: Historically, American families in the 19th century were frequently large, and women (even more so than men) were often poorly educated or not educated at all. As various immigrant groups moved in, they started out with pretty large families, and have gradually gotten smaller and smaller families as families became wealthier.
When you're a subsistence farmer or factory worker where child labor is legal, extra children mean more productive capacity available to the family, so large families are in fact economically rational choices. When you're in an environment where a child costs you $250,000 over 18 years (plus another $150,000 for college), fewer children are an economically rational choice.
Re:What horrible graphics (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're a little bit too much in love with Tufte. The lie factor is based on the following dictum of his: "The representation of numbers, as physically measured on the surface of the graphic itself, should be directly proportional to the quantities represented."
To which my response is: "Why?"
Just because Tufte says so, doesn't make it so. In this case, it would require the plotting of life expectancy from zero. What would be the point? Rosling is using the graph to describe changes over time, how countries are bouncing up and down on the y-axis and moving upwards as the wealth of their populations increases. These are concepts that require no precise quantitative reading of the data by the audience to understand, but which will be more difficult to follow if the changes are compressed into two thirds of the graph.
To be honest, I think Tufte's pronouncements on this and many other issues, and the use of concepts like "Lie Factor" are pseudo-science, dressing up his particular view of the world with a sheen of Sciencey-ness that is unjustifiable. Many of his ideas are good, and the rationale behind them is sound, but it ain't the Only Truth, as he makes it appear to be.