Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World

by Liberty Mitchell Brock

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

FACTFULNESS: the stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. 

Hans Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health and many other things, including co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation. He has been listed as one of Time Magazine’s one hundred most influential people. He devoted his final years to writing this book, designed to educate the reader and challenge the widely received world view by demonstrating just how distorted it is. 

Before beginning the book you are asked to complete a short quiz, in which you are asked simple questions about global trends. Easy, right? Hans tested this quiz on journalists, Nobel laureates and investment bankers during his many talks. If we said that a chimpanzee was completing the test, and there were three possible answers to choose from for each question, systematically the chimpanzee would score 33%. This was consistently more than the scores people Hans tested were getting. How can we be so wrong? I was baffled by how wrong my perceptions of the world were when I took the test. Grab a piece of paper and have a go yourself.

1. In all the low-income countries across the world today, how many girls finish primary school?

1. 20%

2. 40%

3. 60%

2. Where does the majority of the world population live?

1. Low-income countries

2. Middle-income countries

3. High-income countries

3. In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has…

1. almost doubled

2. remained more or less the same

3. almost halved

4. What is the life expectancy of the world today?

1. 50 years

2. 60 years

3. 70 years

5. There are two billion children in the world today, aged 0 to 15 years old. How many children will there be in the year 2100, according to the United Nations?

1. 4 billion

2. 3 billion

3. 2 billion

6. The UN predicts that by 2100 the world population will have increased by another 4 billion people. What is the main reason?

1. There will be more children (age below 15)

2. There will be more adults (age 15 to 74)

3. There will be more very old people (age 75 and older)

7. How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?

1. More than doubled

2. Remained about the same

3. Decreased to less than half

8. There are roughly 7 billion people in the world today. Which map shows best where they live? (Each figure represents 1 billion people) 

9. How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease? 

1. 20%

2. 50%

3. 80%

10. Worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average. How many years have women of the same age spent in school?

1. 9 years

2. 6 years 

3. 3 years

11. In 1996, tigers, giant pandas, and black rhinos were all listed as endangered. How many of these three species are more critically endangered today?

1. Two of them

2. One of them

3. None of them

12. How many people in the world have some access to electricity?

1. 20%

2. 50%

3. 80%

13. Global climate experts believe that, over the next 100 years, the average temperature will…

1. get warmer

2. remain the same

3. get colder

Answers

1: C, 2: B, 3: C, 4: C, 5: C, 6: B, 7: C, 8: A, 9: C, 10: A, 11: C, 12: C, 13: A

How did you do? If you scored high and felt as if nothing was guessed you don’t really need to continue reading this article. If, on the other hand, you felt as if you were unsure about some of the questions and that you relied a lot on guessing, I would strongly recommend you read this book. Don’t worry you are not alone, don’t feel embarrassed, you are with the majority. Reading this book will help you to see the bigger picture. We are all victims of only seeing disasters in the news and thinking that must be it. We never see anything of good news, yet we never seem to question it. It isn’t entirely our fault our perceptions are so off, however we do have the ability to better educate ourselves. A great place to start would be to read this book. I found that reading this book has made me think twice about everything I hear, see, or am told. It has also encouraged me to question the background to any fact I am told because lots is hidden underneath the tip of an iceberg.