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Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes
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.
...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.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html Here, I'm guessing. It's a worthwhile watch.
He slows the presentation to show World War 1 and the Spanish Flu epidemic but he didn't mention the Cultural Revolution in China during the 60's when the large circle representing China takes a HUGE dive. Some analysis relating political/economic systems to this graph is needed. When Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Wealth of Nations, it was because the UK was the outlier in the top right of this graph. Now that a lot of countries are in that quadrant, it is worth noting the outliers are now the few remaining in the lower left. These are the countries whose political systems most interfere with market forces and prevent their citizens from being productive.
People always complain about how great the good old days were. I guess this is a pretty solid evidence that they sucked.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
...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.
Huh, well, from my point of view, the growth is based more so on just pure unadulterated knowledge. Knowledge of how to make all the above work for us despite its evils. As we increase knowledge this only gets better. As time progresses, we get better at exchanging and persisting knowledge (we're doing it right now on glowing squares in front of us but we could be across the world). It will only get messy if we stop promoting science, medicine, learning, education, research, understanding, translation, tolerance, etc.
Just another optimistic spin to put back on the already staggering performance we've exhibited relatively recently.
My work here is dung.
Is the lone red dot remaining in the Sick & Poor quadrant North Korea by chance?
Nope, it's Afghanistan. (I know because I replicated this graph using their website gapminder.org)... Just so you know, GapMinder World will color Afghanistan turquoise, not red.
or, perhaps, "Works for Rackspace"
rewriting history since 2109
P.S. here's a great map of life expectancy by country
It's pretty clear the lowest life expectancy in Asia is Afghanistan.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
They don't have to invent their own medicine from scratch. The technology, once created, is easy to export. If one country finds a breakthrough in the field of medicine, agriculture, or communications, the world at large is enriched by it.
How about we look at this again but eliminate several typical graphing mistakes....
First, let's have all axes start at zero, not at, say, 33% of the range. This would immediately show that there is less disparity between average lifetime then the presenter attempts to make you perceive.
second let's have a non-logarithm axes for a typical unit that is thought of as linear... money.
Third, if we are going to compare wealth then we should be comparing amount of money held vs what it can buy, not just raw money per person. Sure people in the Congo have far less dollars per person than Japan. But a loaf of bread and the supplies they want to buy are far, far cheaper. In other words, it is possible for a smaller amount of currency from economy A to buy more goods and services in economy B. You need to account for this in determining "wealth". You can't just exchange currency rates to determine who is better off.
Lastly, You also have to dollar adjust for inflation even for specific countries over time. A typical mid-range american car in 2010 costs around US$25000; in 1977... US$5000. So, yes we might have more dollars per person in the US today but you're going to need 5 times as many dollars as you had 33 years ago in order to just break even.
And, while we are at it. I would get rid of the enthusiastic and "compelling" presentation acting. This is always a sign of attempting to market more than is really there. It is science through how the presenter can make you "feel" and it leads to poor knee-jerk decisions.
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the improvements to medical services to the general public shows right across the board from the turn of the 20th century, we can watch the rise of life expectancy. I bet the delta on that is huge in comparison to income
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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
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
To a certain extent, you can create your own graphs with Hans Rosling's software from http://www.gapminder.org/
It was important in 1810. Babies mean future hunters, gatherers, farm labor for the tribe or family.
While being a screaming poop factory for a couple years, by age 4 a child could be tasked with simple gathering, clean up and food/tool preparation. By age 6-7 a child could be killing vermin, small animal hunting and other near adult, gender specific chores.
By age 10 a male child would be supporting hunting, fishing and farming and by 12 actively taking part in hunts, farming or by the mid 1800s industrial work.
Loss of a child on the American Frontier, the sub-arctic or in tribal societies was a huge loss of food, energy and future growth.
That's not entirely true. While the increase in average life span is not as dramatic if you remove the effect of infant mortality, there is still a huge increase in the last 150 years. For example, if you look at the life expectancy for a 10-year-old white male, in 1850 it was 58 years, in 1900 it was 60.59 years, in 1950 it was 68.98 years and in 2004 it was 76.3 years. There are lots of factors other than infant mortality that have improved over that time: safer working conditions, access to health care, even refrigeration (an astonishing number of people died of food poisoning in the "the good old days" speaking of "crap we try to kill ourselves with").
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All that data is available. Turns out he's not some asshole saying "Trust me on this, you don't need to see anything." He's got a site where you can play with his data in his amazing graphing software, http://www.gapminder.org/. You can toy with the graph and run it backwards and forwards, and break out the information, you can download the raw data in excel format or view it on the web. All Creative Commons licensed.
It is quite open and available, and not hard to find to anyone willing to do even a cursory amount of research. Just key his name in to Google.
To me it seems like the GP isn't actually interested, just being a pedant whiner. "Oh his methods are flawed and it is too simple!" Of COURSE it is simple, it is a 4 minute spot for the BBC. It is not a dour academic presentation. That doesn't mean there isn't good data behind it, or that it isn't available. If you actually care, well then I'd say you should do research. After all that is what we are talking about. In this case, literally all you'd need to do is key "Hans Rosling" in to Google and the first site is his, with all the data and so on.
To the parent: Good analysis of why the GP is incorrect about his complaints.
To the grand parent: STFU and spend 30 seconds doing some research before being a pedantic whiner. If you care about facts and accuracy the least you could do is get them yourself.
So what will you call it when global production peaks?
A transition from oil to renewable energy. Oil production will peak from traditional sources, because renewable energy prices will crash through the floor, and production will soar.
What, iron? We have that. It isn't economically viable. And it will never produce enough liquid fuel to provide for the level of transportation we currently enjoy.
Then why does south africa use it for their diesel? Because it is.
You realize that coal will peak also, and isn't unlimited?
Because you can feed waste biomass into the system, like sewage, trash, and wood scrap. This already happening in Africa.
Population grows exponentially.
Paul Erlich, Tomas Malthus and the members of the flat earth society still believe this. The problem is that it is false, because captalism = wealth = less population growth. India, China, the USA, all have zero or rapidly zeroing population growth rate.
"Affluence" will peak once we reach the limit of exploitable resources on Earth.
Actually it will stop because people are starting to get satisfied with the amount of stuff they have. Once you have a house and an SUV, and maybe a motor home, what else do you want?
"Technology level" (whatever that means exactly) will peak given a large enough supply-shock to send researchers heading for the hills.
Because population growth will stop, innovation will stop the shortages, and wealth will grow, this just won't happen.
You do the math.
I did the math. Now let's see some math from the Malthus flat earth society, who's basic core fact (exponential population growth) is utterly wrong.
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At the same time, this guy needs to read a bit more about data presentation.
Hans Rosling needs to "read a bit more about data presentation"!? Lol ---- that's like looking at some of John Carmack's work and saying "yeah it's OK but this guy, whoever he is, needs to learn a bit more about 3D programming". I'm not sure you realize who you are talking about; Hans Rosling has been one of the 'pioneers' of modern data visualization since probably before you were born. Your post is a classic example of the instinctive need of so many /. posters to try prove how smart they are by being "contrarian" and immediately criticizing something. The graphics isn't even horrible at all, it's pretty damn cool, and everything was very clear to me when I watched it, so perhaps you frankly if you struggled to see it I suggest you see an optometrist.
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.
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.
I am officially gone from
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.