Play Book Tag discussion

Hans Rosling is a global health expert and doctor having served communities in various parts of the world as well as in his home of Sweden. As a public speaker, he realized that many have a wrong perception of the state of the world giving a more pessimistic view. Turning to data to make informed decisions, Rosling shares how certain tendencies lead people astray and shares how people can better understand data and not be tricked by biased reporting and incomplete facts. As a math teacher, I quite enjoyed his use of data to understand the world.

Even though I regularly spend months every year in and have lived years in the African continent, I got quite a number of his baseline questions wrong. It is so easy to fall for dramatic reports leading us to believing the worst case scenario. I appreciated the tips to do better and think harder before coming to quick decisions. The stories he shared to prove his points were thoughtful and applied the points well. I really wonder what he would have said about the Covid 19 pandemic especially after being on the ground for the Ebola outbreak. Definitely, he would have been a powerful force for collecting data and using it to make sound decisions rather than wild guesses just to "do" something.

Another interesting point that he repeatedly made is that there really isn't an us or them situation that is regularly used in many areas. At this point, many countries are in the middle economy of what he sees as 4 levels of wealth. Coming from a country at the top of the wealth scale, it is a struggle to wrap my head around the layers but I have seen in my own experiences the real differences that seemingly small incomes can make on the life of a family. I appreciated the academic and well researched approach to determining facts.

Steeplechase: STEM x 10; Europe x 6
BWF Tenacious Trailblazers: Letter R bonus