Hans Rosling: usare i dati per cambiare mentalità

La scorsa settimana Google ha lanciato Think Quarterly, un magazine che si concentra su un tema analizzandolo nei suoi vari aspetti e sviluppi in ambito aziendale (ma non solo).
Il primo numero parla, neanche a dirlo, di dati e ha molti interventi interessanti, da Nigel Shadbolt (creatore di data.gov.uk con Tim Berners-Lee) ad Hans Rosling, famoso per i suoi studi statistici e per le sue spettacolari presentazioni "dinamiche".

In particolare è interessante vedere come uno statistico come Rosling veda come fondamentale la necessità di creare una nuova mentalità e un nuovo modo di vedere una serie di processi. A partire dal freddo dato? Ebbene sì.

We found that the most important thing when presenting our data [on graphs such as the Health and Wealth of Nations, which tracks 200 years of global life expectancy versus income per person in a four-and-a-half-minute video] was not to put time on the X-axis. We made time move, and when you see the movement, the data becomes like a football match – you can see who is catching up or, for instance, that a country like Bangladesh is reducing its child mortality rate faster than Sweden ever did.

Bangladesh is still at a low level economically, but at the same time there is a huge internal market with cheap distribution and only one language. So if you are a company with ambition, you have to be in Bangladesh. It’s one of the 10 biggest countries in the world, but people’s mindset leads them to believe that Bangladesh is a hopeless place in need of aid. What is so strong with animation is that it provides that mindset shift in market segmentation. We can see where there are highly developed countries with a good economy and a healthy and well-educated staff.

L'intervista è qui.
Qui un video di Rosling a TED.