In the Joy of Stats video, Hans Rosling goes on to show how statistics has revolutionized the way our world works and is continuing to lead us into an ever-greater understanding of our universe. With this amazing use of data collection, “our eyes can be opened to an effect-based view of the World.” Moreover, Rosling highlights the history of statistics, the foundational role of statistics in developing sound public policy, the role of descriptive statistics, data visualization, correlation, and mapping our universe, and understanding the people within it.
Throughout the video, Rosling talks about the history of statistics and its evolution into what it is today. The word Statistics originally comes from the word ‘State,’ which correlates because the math form originated within the state of Sweden where the government insisted on getting involved to improve the well-being of their people. Their government took this action in 1749, by using the ‘Tabell Vatican,’ which in turn was the first systematic collection of statistics that collected data on every birth, marriage, and family. Sweden's collection of this data truly was the first time that any government could get an accurate picture of its people. Moreover, the statistical results were horrifying, revealing that many women died during childbirth and many children died young as well, which led to the government taking action. After 50 years, many other countries and provinces began to utilize this useful tool and began to improve every aspect that lied within it. Then, in 1834, Charles Babbage founded the Royal Statistical Society to be a professional body for statisticians and to discover ways to improve society through the use of statistics. Then, came the printing press, which widespread the use of data being shared and experimented with. Lastly, the internet has been the biggest contributor to the growth of our knowledge and use of statistics, providing endless seas of data that are updated and added to every day.
The foundational role of statistics in developing a sound public policy throughout history has been used for government, population, and social inequalities. Statistics has helped us as a society to monitor our governors better and for our governors to better control and understand our society, characterize whole populations to be able to better address issues for all of the state/ provinces, and mapping social inequalities to better our society. Moreover, Rosling emphasizes the use of data and how that has created a solid foundation for the world by commenting that, “Data is still the oxygen of science, the more we have, the more we can know and utilize it.”
Rosling emphasizes the role of descriptive statistics, by further explaining key elements within statistics, such as mean and variance. Calculating the mean means taking out the average out of a mass of data and reducing it to a single number, so we can see and understand data more clearly. With statistics, we can take averages of various things, although averages don’t tell you the whole story, we can still get more of a handle on data and calculate a rough estimate on a country especially. Moreover, averages are very key in the use of this math form. However, the variation of the data is just as vital and goes hand in hand with mean — variation measures how a far a set of numbers, that usually are randomly selected, are spread out from their average value. Together, these two elements can be used to describe the basic features of the data used in a particular study.
As statistics has become more widespread, statisticians have been able to advance their studies, and Rosling highlights the evolving techniques of Data Visualization that has enhanced our knowledge of society. Florence Nightingale was one of our world’s most pivotal people, who was the first person to make and use a graph to make statistics visual, enjoyable, and understandable to the human eye and mind. When she was nine years old, she already had a hunger to experiment with statistics and used fruits and vegetables to begin organizing them in standard form. Then, when she got older, she went to care for the British casualties in the war and was very concerned with the death rate increasing, so she began to gather research as to why these soldiers were dying and made a polar area graph. This graph consisted of different color wedges of recorded data for each month of the war, which made it very easy for others to understand the results. After Nightingale created this visual, people and statisticians began to use more graphs and visuals, which has evolved into the various graphs we utilize today. Now, nursing and hospital facilities use the polar area graph, which has saved hundreds of lives. Overall, our world has come to discover that visualization helps people to enjoy and understand data, how to get a handle of variation by transforming numbers into shape and giving a better picture of how the data sets vary.
In statistics, correlation plays a huge role in many discoveries of this life-enriching math form, including the “Universal Translator.” In the video, Rosling gives his audience visual graphs that show examples of correlations within life expectancy and wealth/income, economic status and crime rates, infection and poor sanitation, etc. He shares the way through knowing these correlations and seeing the progression or decline of data through these graphs; we can see the differences between the best and worst of countries, the country averages and being able to split them into provinces, and how things vary together. Through this, there is hope to be taken from taking action and doing something about these correlations to better the world. Speaking of correlation, Rosling also shows the discoveries that have been made and how that has connected our world, especially through the “Universal Translator,” also known as Google Translate. When translating, the computer has been programmed to correlate words and phrases; as they feed the system very large amounts of data and then the system is seeing that a certain word or certain phrase correlates to the other language. Google offers over 57 different language translations purely through the use of statistics and computer science. Overall, because of the tools of statistics, we are also able to be connected worldwide and learn how to speak in another’s language to communicate with them.
This amazing math form has revolutionized so many different areas in the world and has even enhanced the way we can see stars and planets. Astronomers are now able to address many enduring mysteries by implying statistical methods to all this new data. They have also been able to use radial velocity graphs to show stars’ travel patterns. In the past, large surveys of the night sky had to be done by exposing thousands of large photographic plates, which took years to complete. However, everything changed in the 1990s, when digital astronomy revolutionized survey data in astronomy.
Rosling ends the video, highlighting how, through statistics, we can also understand people and their emotions better. Through the computer and people leaving behind digital traces of their lives, we can calculate most common feelings just by using the key words ‘I am feeling…’. Through this process, we can analyze each emotion and break it down by age, gender, race, etc. Some of the examples Rosling through looking at the data was older people feel happier, women feel more loved, and older people tend to associate happiness with peacefulness, which allows us to go more into depth with research of people.
Overall, statistics and its analyzation of all sorts of data, we can gain more knowledge and understanding of our world, which will only grow and expand from here.