FACTFULNESS- fighting devastates global ignorance.

Having a love-hate relationship with numbers. I love numbers when it has some impact and I hate numbers when I have to do calculations. I vividly remember studying statistics and economics in my high school where numbers excited me as it tells the story about the lives of people. Other times I do not feel like playing sense fewer oranges and apples in the basket.

Facts and statistics had some sort of impact on my life and Whoola I got afraid, excited, and sad I realized my emotions were getting hijacked by those things... I also realized such data can be misleading and I shall not trust the projection of such data as it has been shown. Then I landed on Gates-note where Bill Gates talked about this book. The next thing I knew, I already ordered "Factfullness" by Hans Rosling, and by the time the book got delivered I already watched a bunch of TED talks and videos of Hans.

It was clear that this man was on a mission to fight devastating global ignorance. I won't be wrong if I say, my ignorance got devastated, and it started with instinct. We all think our instinct is never wrong but with data, it can be wrong. For example,

The Child Mortality rate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was 242 but I was surprised to know that it is around 35 now.

This book taught me how to think about numbers and most importantly it also deals with the misconception of the concept of "West v/s Rest" as we tend to think that the Western world is largely developed and East is not much developed and there is no EAST it is rest of the world. How Japan & Malaysia have been considered western and Mexico has been considered western and not the west. It deals with the whole Western world concept.

I came to know that we all compare data but we compare with extremes. As we think of poverty. We all think of relative poverty... where if someone belongs to a middle-income country it will be considered as poor as they have compared relatively.

This book also counters many misconceptions like... "Rich is getting richer and poor are getting poorer." and "world is getting worse." I learned never to trust data 100% as there is always uncertainty. I loved the 20-year exercise where we can try to know what the world was like 20 years before and then question ourselves if the world is getting worse.

We all see news and we do not realize that it is a product of selective reporting. If you feel there is more crime happening now... Then we feel the world is getting worse, we don't think, we just feel like. When we get bad news we remember all bad events and when we get good news... Probably we don't get good news because good news is not even news.

This book also gives clarity about demographics and its projection through 4 levels of income groups. It also encourages talking with Grandpa to know how our values change. And finally, I love it when it gave caution which we shall not be experts beyond your field.