15 Comments so far

1. Problèmes de santé « Dr. Goulu on September 12th, 2009

   [...] le créateur du merveilleux GapMinder, répond à une dizaine de questions d’internautes dans cette vidéo dont un extrait m’a particulièrement plu. De 8′ à 11′20, il répond à une [...]

2. Eric on September 13th, 2009

   I quite enjoy all your talks and presentations- especially your major point about how we have to contextualize data and view things in specific, but not independent, situations. You touched upon this in your answer to question #3. Your presentations often remind me of books and seminars from Dr. Paul Farmer whom I’ve been an avid fan of since reading his book “Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues.” I am curious as to why you say “It’s not realistic with lifelong treatment for everyone in the poorest countries.” (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv.html) Of course you said that in the context of PEPFAR but I think you should not have diverted to prevention so quickly! Indeed there is evidence that outside of PEPFAR and US government aid, we can find treatment a plausible option- though I am in favor of a rigorous combination of both treatment and prevention.

   From Dr. Farmer’s work and his Non-government Organization (NGO), Partners in Health (http://www.pih.org/), it looks as if the situation is quite the opposite! That on a community level, it is indeed realistic for long-term healthcare for people in the poorest countries. I’d like your opinions and suggestions on this.

   And in the broader context, I’d like to hear any of your suggestions for NGOs in general- governments may be the focus but they are too limited and too broadly-focused that specific situations can go under the radar. NGOs have the capabilities to be flexible and respond quickly whereas governments do not.

   Thanks and I look forward to more lectures!
   -Eric

3. Peter Wing on September 13th, 2009

   Thanks for this (the 10 questions).

   Africa has a major problem with its epidemic of trauma. Can Gapminder help (with the display of trends in injury rates over time) to make this the priority for nations and the international community that many of us feel it should be? As I see it we have to do this both with respect to prevention and acute care.

4. Three videos that educators should consider « Elizabeth Tweets on September 13th, 2009

   [...] new video where he answers questions posed by TED viewers: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/ted-and-reddits-10-questions-to-hans-rosling/ (my favourite part was hearing that he’s working to get this into schools for kids to mess [...]

5. Hans Rosling: Global health expert and data visionary | OBRA MAESTRA on September 15th, 2009

   [...] TED and Reddit’s 10 questions to Hans Rosling Posted September 11, 2009 10 questions to HansThe Internet community Reddit.com got to ask [...]

6. Scott on September 17th, 2009

   Hans, great video. On #6 I have to take exception… not because I do or do not support public healthcare, but because I believe your statistics are flawed. Comparing the United States’ average life expectancy to that of Switzerland or other European countries is like comparing Apples and Oranges because the two populations have very different demographics, especially when race is concerned. I would be much more interested in seeing the life expectancy for caucasians in Switzerland (and other countries) vs the caucasians in the US, the blacks in both countries comapred, the Asians compared, etc. My guess is that the data will change radically.

   Hi Scott
   I sort of disagree with you. I think you rather should compare the black population in US with the black population in Sweden. Child mortality is three times higher among blacks in US than among blacks in Sweden. You should also compare native Americans with the Sami people in Sweden, i.e. the native Swedes that herd rein dears in “reserves” in remote mountain areas. The native Americans have more than twice the child mortality of the Sami people in Sweden. Sweden and most high income countries have managed to reduce the excess risk for disadvantage ethnic and social groups to the extent that the health indicators are the same or almost the same as for the main group of Caucasian population. US has not even seriously tried to do it! But this is but one part of the US health system failure.
   The non-Hispanic white population in Vermot (as close as you get to Sweden in US) has an infant mortality of 5 per 1000 and Sweden has 3 per 1000. The white in Vermont has in fact a higher infant mortality than the the black immigrants from Africa has in Sweden.

   So yes, there are still unnecessary social and ethnic inequities in US and the health system is costly and yet inefficient even for privileged white groups. The infant mortality among blacks in Washington DC is higher than in Barbados. You lose in all health system sports. Black against blacks, white against whites, natives against natives. Your are not good at it.
   But I am convinced that US if it decides to do so can mend the system. A nation that is so good in sport, wins so many Nobel prizes, leads in the space, gave us GPS and created Internet, Microsoft and Google can of course help black, native and white kids survive to the same extent as they do in other countries with similar economies.
   It is just that the decision to do it has not been made!
   Go for it! You can do it!

   Kind regards from a friend of all good sides of the United States
   Hans Rosling

7. son on September 28th, 2009

   great to visit

8. GEOadorer on September 29th, 2009

   Hi,

   Your lectures have quite changed the way i interpret statistics (especially from school books). I have a teacher who’s passionate about updated statistics and we use a lot of internet based stats (especially from cia.gov) instead of our books. Still, some information we learn is taken directly from books printed in 2000 and below and it gets confusing when you have part of updated and some partially out of date statistics. I am going to show this gapminder.org site to my teacher! It’s going to change the way we work!

   I am actually writing to ask you if you could upload somewhere the Flash application showing statistics about the income per day in different continents.

   And another request: is there something like an rss feed where we could absorb the statistics you use on gapminder and use it in our own Flash applications?

   Thanks for answering.

   Dear GEOadorer, thanks for your questions.
   The problem with showing daily income, such as number of people living under 1$ a day, which is the commonly used poverty estimate, is that the margin of error is very big. Last year the world bank recalculated the PPP-course that are used to determine how many are people living in poverty in a way that can be compared across countries, and global poverty “increased” with almost 500 million people in a blink of an eye. This is one reason why we have been a bit hesitant to add income-poverty data into Gapminder World.

   The other question about the data behind the presentations, do I understand you correctly that you would like to have the actual numbers we use? If so, you can find all data by clicking the little icon next to the axis-name, or download the indicators to excel on this page.

   /Staffan, Gapminder

9. Shane on October 14th, 2009

   Fascinating stuff as usual! But I also have a small issue with looking at life expectancy as proof of a successful health system.

   This doesn’t take into account the differences in lifestyle between different countries. The US has very high levels of obesity, for example, which must lower life expectancy a lot. Poor diets will impact life expectancy while telling us nothing about the success of the health system.

10. Chris on November 25th, 2009

    Hans your presentations are interesting but hide or avoid issues such as how cultural and religiouse belief systems effect control or release creative potential that fuels ideas technology industry…there is no doubt that the supremacy of the west began with Christianity and it’s liberal child humanism…the free thinking allowed in the west has enabled them to develop…being a Swedish person your country has benefited from first British invention and industrial development…and later from the USA…Sweden has done little of the cutting edge of anything but industrial design…your ideas on Asia are correct in that Asian students study harder…however this has to be balanced against the restrictive cultural thinking imposed upon them by Islam and Hinduism…and in China “communist dictatorship” also your notion that development is good does not stand up…why is it that Kerela has good health and the USA is less healthy?…is it to do with life style and diet? and if Kerela catches up as you predict will this also be catching up with high industrialized problems like depression stress related disease common to the industrialized west?…look at Swedens suicide levels…your a dreamer who projects a liberal fantasy upon statistics…the British Empire was not simply exploitative it created the legal linguistic and cultural basis for a modern India…railways telegraphs and thinking…I wonder why the world does not speak Swedish?

11. TED AND REDDIT’S 10 QUESTIONS TO HANS ROSLING « Blog about Stats on November 30th, 2009

    [...] TED AND REDDIT’S 10 QUESTIONS TO HANS ROSLING Posted September 11, 2009  Comments(10) [...]

12. Idea Works Blog » Statistics that Tell a Story on December 3rd, 2009

    [...] explains: Statistics has to go together with other information and with experience. That’s when [...]

13. Statistics as story: narrative journalism by the numbers? – Nieman Storyboard - A project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on December 15th, 2009

    [...] an interview posted in September, he notes that what’s surprising about what he’s doing is not really anything new about the [...]

14. Don on January 5th, 2010

    Hans, I appreciate your efforts, and am always in awe of the trends I see when watching you use gapminder. I am still learning your awesome product, and will evangelize it to all schools in my area. Thanks for your efforts, and giving me the motivation to try and make a difference.

15. Jörg on February 1st, 2010

    Thank you and your team for a profound look in to world statistics!
    I agree with you that the news industry all over the world lacks to use this kind of information so that the danger of overpublishing (as you pointed out with the example of pigflue) quite unrelevant facts is latent.
    Hopefully a lot of people will follow you in building up their own model of the wolrd with the help of hard numbers.
    Shamefully TV stations in germany invest millions of € in new computerized virtual studios und animation systems to place the anchorman and his shadow in a virtual reality just to let some unemployment figures fly in the studio without any relyable background information (gliding averages, historical timeseries and so on..) – instead of paying for brainpower to explain the numbers behind the news as you doo with a very low budget.
    Probably you could establish some new ratios conerning valuable information outcome of a public TV-System compared to amount money that the used for their news-program or the fees the TV-wachters have to pay
    As a teacher im highly interested in your future content for teachers.
    Finaly I have a technical question:
    Is it possible to set the maximum value of an axis in gapmimder? For example if I like to compare the average income of different countries with a linear scale, which isn’t possible if I always see the billion dollar incomes at the top. Is there a possibilty to restrict the maximum value for example to 10000$ for visualizing the absolute differences in the lower income groups?
    Again, thank you for great work!!
    Best regards
    Jörg, southwest germany

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