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For many young people educated in the United States, the idea of a dual world – split neatly into the realms of “developing” and “industrialized” – may not seem at all strange. However, as Professor Hans Rosling demonstrates in his TED Talk, “The best stats you’ve ever seen,” this dangerously misleading outlook fails to accurately portray the current state of the globe. From concepts of wealth and prosperity to social transparency between governments and populations, almost everything Western academia typically portrays as simplistic is far more complex than any American student could hope to realize through the average high-school curriculum. As Professor Rosling rapidly dismantled a series of preconceived notions via bright, engaging graphics and “action replays” that would put the average sports broadcasting system to shame, I was reminded of the Human Geography course I took in my senior year. Over the course of the video, I realized that in discussing topics similar to those presented by Prof. Rosling’s TED Talk, my class gave me a leg up in understanding many of the developmental problems that Rosling mentioned; for instance, the links between family GDPs and fertility rates in different countries across the globe.
This feeling of déjà vu only further solidified my support for Professor Rosling’s conclusion about the future of the “big data” industry – that data about the world, especially when it comes to information about development trends and opportunities, must be more accessible to the general public if its leaders actually hope to make use of it. The rise of the internet over the past thirty years has encapsulated almost the entire world, yet government-funded databases and the results of reliable social research have remained buried behind paywalls and attempts to privatize such resources. Liberating and simplifying data for people across wealth and status quintiles would allow the internet to live up to its name as the “World Wide Web,” allowing data science to be used as a tool for equity. Specific, contextualized solutions to distinctive problems can only be produced through the close examination of a dilemma’s incentive factors. By utilizing programs like gapminder.com, which seek to make data digestible for the masses, people across the world – regardless of their proximity to the “developing” world – could better understand economic, social, and even environmental changes, and, eventually, even induce them on their own.
Citation Rosling, Hans. “The best stats you’ve ever seen.” TED, Feb 2006, www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen/up-next?language=en.