INSIGHTS FROM THE BESTSELLER: FACTFULNESS BY HANS ROSLING

Almost nobody is correct about basic global trends. Majority of us suffer from an overdramatic worldview We think that the world is in a much worse shape than it actually is. The heaps of statistics we are fed with on a daily basis, more often than not stem from personal bias, outdated facts and skewed information from the media. This combined with our intuition results in our upsidedown world view This is where Factfulness comes in handy. Through this book, Rosling helps us get rid of our global ignorance and offers us a new framework for how to think about the world He reveals 10 dramatic instincts that distort our perspective about the world and helps us combat them by adopting the stress-reducing habit called “Factfulness” Some of the breakthrough insights are highlighted in this article.

1 How often do you talk about the ‘developed’ or the ‘developing’ world? If you find yourself frequently using these labels, you might be surprised to know that these labels are no longer valid This is nothing but a false dichotomy Dichotomous thinking is an adaptive behaviour that is part of human nature. However, this can be extremely dangerous when it comes to classification of data When we think in terms of extreme opposites, we trigger the gap instinct which makes us imagine a huge divide between the two categories where as in reality, there is just a smooth range. Going back to the division of the world population, Rosling replaces the two groups with a more practical classification through his four-income group model.

Each figure in the chart represents 1 billion people, and the seven figures show how the current world population is spread out across four income levels, expressed in terms of dollar income per day

The above chart is representative of how people on different income levels meet their basic needs. It allows us to understand how people’s lives can change gradually with more money. When the world is divided into these four levels, it helps us understand that today, the vast majority of people are spread out in the middle across levels 2 and 3 and therefore the world population cannot just be divided into the two groups of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’. Hence, Factfulness helps us replace our instinctive dichotomous classifications with better categories that provide more clarity

2. Do you often tend to get things out of proportion?

Given the example of Swine Flu and Tuberculosis as causes of fatalities

According to a survey, over a period of two weeks, 31 people had died from swine flu and roughly 63,066 people had died from TB However, the news coverage for each death caused due to swine flu was almost 81760 times that of the death caused due to Tuberculosis. In the same way, plane crashes always make the news but car crashes which kill far more people, almost never do Common causes of death are underrepresented by the media while deaths due to natural disasters/ terrorism are overrepresented simply because they make for better television. Of course each death is tragic but in order to save more lives we should put in maximum effort and resources in fighting the leading causes of death first. Delving into a state of hysteria and ignoring the more significant things is a product of the size instinct. The 80/20 principle mentioned in the book, known as “Pareto’s Principle” helps in controlling this instinct. It asserts that 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event. It helps us to prioritise things that are of vital importance. Pareto Charts are based on this principle Below is an explanation of them using a random example.

A Pareto Chart is a combination of a bar graph and a line graph, where individual values are represented in descending order by bars, and the cumulative total is represented by the line The left vertical axis represents any important unit of measure often the frequency of occurrence or cost. The right vertical axis is the cumulative percentage of the total number of occurrences, total cost, or total of the particular unit of measure. From the above example, we can infer that 80% of the restraint complaints are due to only ~20% of the reasons

In this way, the 80/20 rule puts things into perspective by presenting the bigger picture. It is helpful in identifying areas which could use more effort and resources to achieve maximum efficiency.

3 Do you often assume apparently straight upward trends to be a part of a straight line? Take World Population for example Most people think that the world population is just increasing They think better healthcare facilities, lower child mortality rate, increase in life expectancy eradication of extreme poverty and radical religious beliefs lead to more survivors which cause this rapid growth It’s not that these are invalid reasons for population to increase but it is just that none of these are the main reason

To our surprise, it is not a straight line but more like a slide in the playground The curve is expected to flatten out at somewhere between 10 and 12 billion people by the end of the century

The radical change that is needed to stop the population explosion is that the number of children stops growing And that is already happening because over the last 50 years the number of babies per woman has dropped to an amazingly low world average of just below 2 5 Isn’t it comforting to learn that we are already on the path of progress? It is just a matter of time until the population growth stabilizes. You might be wondering if that’s the case then what is the reason for the increase in population by over 3 billion The reason is a product of the “fill-up” effect. Children born in the past decades (and their parents) will gradually replace previous and smaller generations Within three generations, the “Fill up effect” will be completed and the population will stabilize.

The dashed line represents what we instinctively imagine We think that the line will just continue straight if no drastic action is taken. This is the straight line instinct which makes us assume that we know how curves continue beyond what we see.

The actual world population forecast is somewhat like this:

But what is striking here is the difference between our assumption and the reality. At a first glance at the graph, we would straight panic thinking that the population will just keep increasing in the future and we tend to rule out anything else that would prove otherwise Hence, it is useful to know that curves come in different shapes An apparently straight upward trend could be of any shape, it could be a part of a straight line, an S-bend, a hump or a doubling line.

In the above graphs, the straight lines do not continue indefinitely but are a part of a larger S-Bend Curve

4. At last, I would like to draw your attention to the data visualization tools used in the book to explain the global trends in a more understandable manner Now as we all know that data is much more valuable when it is visualized Charts and graphs help the human brain interpret and understand data better. Dollar Street and the famous animated bubble-chart tool called Trendalyzer are two of the inventive visualization tools used in the book

·Dollar Street is the brainchild of Anna Rosling where she uses photos and data to understand how people live. Dollar Street is a street which arranges people according to their income, poorest to the left and richest to the right and uses pictures to allow people to understand what the standard of living looks like on different income levels

·Trendalyzer is an interactive bubble-chart which is used across the world to understand multidimensional time series In 2007, the tool was acquired by Google

If you found these insights helpful, you can only imagine the wealth of knowledge that you can gain after reading the entire book Factfulness emphasizes on the need to upgrade. What we learn in school is often outdated information and what we see in social media is often sensationalized and blown out of proportion Hence, Factfulness comes in handy to fix our distorted views of the world by giving us a quick fact-check.