We aren't very good at understanding risks, and we get even worse when we're scared. We tend to assume that trends, like birth rates, will continue in a straight line rates, and that's rarely the case in practice. That means most news is bad, but real life is mostly getting better. The Negativity Instinctīad things tend to happen quickly (war, famine, natural disasters), while good things tend to be slow (year on year drops in child mortality or people living in exteme poverty). For example we create a mental picture of the 'developed world' and the 'developing world', but most people in the world are now much better off than our mental picture suggests. We tend to divide things into groups, and then think in terms of the extremes. By describing them, Rosling hoped to equip us with the tools to upgrade our thinking and overcome our preconceptions. The problem was not a lack of data, but that persistent cognitive biases we all share tend to lead us to an incorrect view of the world, and these instinctive views are suprisingly hard to change. even people who loved my lectures, I sadly realized, weren't really hearing them. This book was born out of Rosling's frustration that, despite the popularity of his talks, people didn't seem to be changing their view of the world.

Rosling's message is positive - the world is, for the most part, better than we think it is in terms of healthcare, poverty, education, etc. This book, finished while Hans was dying and published posthumously, is absolutely essential reading for all of us. You can find his Ted talks online, and they're well worth watching.

Hans Rosling was a brilliant data storyteller, rightly lauded for his ability to grip an audience with his charismatic, upbeat, use of data about the world.

Factfulness review