The joy ofstats, in a Swedish accent
STATISTICS has not, traditionally, been an exciting word. Its most common prefix is the word “dry”. Ask people what they think of statistics, or try to use some in an argument, and you will often get the quote attributed to Benjamin Disraeli that lists them alongside lies and damned lies. That is a shame: tables of figures may look dull, but they are a better guide to what is happening in the world than anything on television or in the press.
Hans Rosling had no time for the idea that statistics were boring. Armed with everything from a few Lego bricks and a pocketful of draughts pieces to snazzy, specially made computer graphics, he had a talent for using numbers to tell exciting stories. Not just exciting, but optimistic, too, for the tales those numbers told were of a world which, despite the headlines, was rapidly becoming a better place.
He knew what he was talking about. Besides being a statistician, he was also a doctor with experience in some of the world’s poorest corners. He did his PhD in Africa, studying a disease called konzo that strikes people whose diets include a lot of semi-processed cassava, which contains high levels of cyanide. But it was his flair for the dramatic that allowed him to share that expertise with other people.
It was a job that needed doing. By the 1990s he was teaching global health at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm. He found that his students—the cream of Sweden’s academic crop—had little idea about the world. When he gave them five pairs of countries and asked which of each pair had the higher rate of child mortality, the average number of correct answers was just 1.8. “Swedish students, in other words,” he said, “know…less about the world than a chimpanzee.” (The chimp, by choosing randomly, would score 2.5 out of five.) The same applied to his academic colleagues—who, as he pointed out with a twinkle in his eye, were responsible for handing out the Nobel prize for medicine.
He was a natural showman. In 2007 he finished a talk on global development with a demonstration of sword-swallowing, ingesting a Swedish-army bayonet live on stage. As his fame grew, he became a regular at gatherings of the great and the good, presenting talks at TED (a series of conferences supposed to give novel ideas an airing; his were much better than most) and attending Davos, an annual gathering of the masters of the universe in Switzerland.
His stock-in-trade was debunking gloomy stereotypes about poor countries and economic development. There were five surprising facts, for instance, that he loved to hammer home: population growth is slowing rapidly; the divide between the global rich and poor is blurring; humans are living much longer than 50 years ago; many more girls are getting an education; and the number of people in extreme poverty fell by a billion between 1980 and 2013.
Dr Rosling’s talent was to make those facts sing—to remind his audience that these dry-sounding numbers are, in fact, the sum total of billions of real lives that are better than they would have been half a century ago. His elevation annoyed some critics. Paul Ehrlich, a biologist who had, in the 1970s, predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve by the end of that decade, accused him of being a Pollyanna. But it was hard to argue with his facts. Most simply celebrated him as a communicator of some happy truths.
Dr Rosling himself was sceptical about how much impact he had really made. People seemed to cling to their gloomy, wrong assumptions about the world. In 2013, in an interview with the Guardian, he reflected: “When we asked the Swedish population how many children are born per woman in Bangladesh, they still think it’s four to five.” In reality, the numbers have not been that high for 20 years. The current rate is 2.3—less than South Africa, and only slightly higher than New Zealand.
数据的乐趣（请脑补瑞典口音）
长久以来，“数据”向来不属于激情派，人们在形容数据的时候往往会说“干瘪瘪的数据”。到大街上采访一下行人对于数据的印象，或者他们对于论文中引用的数据有何印象，得到的答案通常是本杰明·迪斯雷利著名的那句“世界上有三种谎言即谎言、糟糕透顶的谎言和统计数据”。遗憾的是：尽管数据表格看着乏味，他们却能比电视和传媒更好地反应世界现状。
在Hans这儿，不存在数据枯燥乏味这一说，他的“装备”齐全：从乐高积木，到一口袋的国际跳棋棋子，再到精心制作的漂亮图表，他生来就能用数字说出精彩绝伦的故事，精彩只是其一，他的故事还振奋人心，因为这些数字背后诉说着一个越来越好的世界，尽管新闻标题往往不是这么宣传的。
他对于自己讲述的故事了如指掌。Hans除了是个统计学家，还是一个出入贫瘠地区的执业医师。他在非洲获得博士学位，研究的是一种名为Konzo的麻痹疾病，被这种疾病攻击的人群以木薯为主食，这种食物如果处理不彻底具有高含量的生氰化物。但他的这些经验之所以得以与人分享，有赖于他与生俱来的感染力。
这些故事不得不讲一讲。上世纪90年代，他在位于斯德哥尔摩的Karolinska学院教授全球健康课，那里的学生都是瑞典最拔尖的孩子，但他发现他们对于世界的认知却很有限。当时他给他的学生出了道题目，从5对国家中挑选每一对里面儿童死亡率高的那个国家，平均正确率仅为1.8个。“也就是说，瑞典的学生们”Hans说，“对于世界的认知还不如大猩猩。”（大猩猩的随机选择正确率达到2.5个。）他在大学的同事们，那些他一边俏皮地眨眼一边戏称是给诺贝尔医学奖颁奖的学术高人们，测试的结果跟学生们半斤八两。
他属于舞台。2007年，他现场将一把瑞典军刀吞进肚里作为演讲的结尾，当时的主题是全球发展。Hans逐渐声名在外，成为各种聚会的座上宾，他做过TED演讲（这是一个推进创新理念的系列演讲，他的表现远胜其他嘉宾），他也参加过达沃斯论坛，这是每年在瑞士举行的全球领袖峰会。
他最爱干的事儿就是纠正人们对于贫穷国家和经济走势的悲观偏见。有五个“惊人的”事实他津津乐道：人口增速正快速下降；全球穷富的两极分化正在缩小；人类的寿命相较于50年前显著增加；受教育的女性数量逐年递增；1980到2013年间赤贫的人数减少了100万。
Rosling教授具有让事实歌唱的本领，他让听众们从干瘪瘪的数字中看到其背后几十亿人的生活在过去50年间越来越好了。他声名鹊起也招来一些批评。Paul Ehrlich是一个生物学家，曾预言到70年代末全球将有数上亿人食不果腹，他认为Hans是一个盲目乐观的人，但是对于那些事实数据他又无可辩驳。大多数人只是调侃Hans是一些愉快真相的使者。
Rosling教授对于自己到底有多少影响力并不自信，人们似乎仍然坚持着悲观的偏见和错误的臆测。2013年接受《卫报》采访时Hans回忆道：“我们问瑞典民众：在巴格达每个妇女生育数量是多少时，他们的答案还是4至5个孩子。”其实早在20年前，巴格达妇女就不再生那么多孩子了，现在的平均数是2.3个，比南非少一些，只比新西兰高出一小点点。