Factfulness, Hans Rosling (ISBN 978-1473637498, Hodder & Stoughton)

This book was given to me by an uncle somewhere middle of 2019. As I have no shortage of books in the ‘want to read’ category I put in on the stack and left it there for some time. Then came some science oriented discussions about facts with our kids related to their homework assignments. So I decided to read it and see if it would also be useful for teenagers to read. And I must say I can recommend it to anyone trying to understand our world, not just teenagers. Especially in today’s environment where facts don’t seem to matter and people cling to their own version of reality this book is useful. Obviously, if you don’t want to accept certain facts simply because they are incompatible with your beliefs then this book will not solve that problem. Hans Rosling was a Swedish doctor, professor in international health and director of the gapminder foundation. He gave numerous talks and became famous for a TED talk he gave in 2006. In this book Hans Rosling discusses the state of world starting from certain common misconceptions and then uses available data to refute these misconceptions. It is this process of taking an opinion and then questioning it and checking it against available data that makes this book an interesting read. It is accessible to readers of all backgrounds as no scientific background is required. You have no reason to feel dumb when another of your ideas about the state of the world is proven wrong : the author starts his chapters with the results of surveys he took from the various audiences he gave talks to and these specialists in various domains will certainly not have done any better than you. The book is not too long and you can consume a chapter and then put it aside for a while if you don’t feel like reading the next one. You can pick up where you left later one without much trouble. What is also nice is that he discusses his data sources a bit and if you look at the plots that were actually made by his son Ola and his daughter in law you can easily recognise visualisations similar to the ones you can make in python with pyplot etcetera. From that point of view this book is an invitation to both the curious and incredulous to start their own ‘citizen science project’, to find trustable datasources on the web on which to create their own custom analysis and visualisations in for example python. Of course things are not all that simple and interpreting data can be very tricky but I make the claim that it is far more rewarding and convincing to yourself than discarding statements claiming they are fake news or all part of a great conspiracy to … ??? .