So for this set of questions, Mariko and I thought that we would try out using SubEthaEdit to work on the questions. These answers here were the product of a study hall's worth of work together. Aside from the occasional edit wars (all too common on Wikipedia I assure you), it is very interesting to see how she answers the questions compared to me. Everyone just approaches them differently in their own ways, using their own experiences and incorporating that into the way that they answer them. I'm trying to figure out how to export and still retain the individual user colors; it's so cool to see how our colors are interspersed throughout the whole document!
1. How would you describe Sweden as a country (population, affluence, child mortality)?
Sweden is a country with a small population of only 9.3 million but relatively high affluence. Common to most developed countries, child mortality rates are low.
2. Why would chimps do better on the test?
The chimpanzees simply guessed and so did better than Swedish students or professors who had preconceived notions about the countries which caused them to get mostly wrong answers.
3. The x axis is fertility rate, y axis is survival age. Where would you put the US?
Towards the top left of the graph. They have a high survival age, but not a very high fertility rate due to a high population of educated women.
4. What were the two classes of country he finds?
Western world: long life in small family. Third world: short life in large family.
5. How did they change? What is the trend?
All the third world countries started to experience a decrease in the number of children per family while simultaneously seeing an increase in life expectancy. The trend is for all countries to move towards long lives and small families.
6. US vs. Vietnam: compare since 1960-why?
Vietnam starts to catch up to the United States following 1960. During the war, life expectancy started to increase. Following the war, family planning started and lowered the amount of children per family. Vietnam has the same rate now as the US did in 1974.
7. Look carefully at the X axis on the dollars graph-is it linear? What does this imply?
It is logarithmic. This implies that the graph is being manipulated in a way to make the point the person is trying to make the strongest. The gap between developed countries and third world countries is even greater when converted to a linear scale.
8. Mark Twain said: "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics" how is this relevant?
In the words of Dr. R, "Numbers can tell us anything if we torture them long enough. In ways, Rosling's talk is all about numbers and statistics. How data is presented is an art form where numbers can be manipulated to support any kind of argument, which is essentially what he is doing here.
9. What is the OECD?
The "Countrly club of the UN." The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.
10. Is there a relationship between income and % child survival? Explain.
Money: The more money the country, the higher the child survival rate. Higher income positively correlates with rate of child survival. This makes sense as higher income usually means better access to safe drinking water, food, and health care, all factors involved in child survival.
11. Which should come first: health or wealth? How does this relate to IPAT?
Wealth comes before health. Once wealth is there, infrastructure can start to be put in, providing sources of clean water and health care that leads to health. IPAT is the formula for impact based on population, affluence, and technology level; we see that affluence and technology (which includes medical technology) are both on the same side of the equation.
12. "Nations use money better than they did in the past"- what does he mean by this?
Countries with mineral wealth (such as the United Arab Emirates) started off rich but only recently have begun to invest in health care, education, and social services. Because of this, life expectancy lagged behind per capita income in these countries by several decades in some cases, but is catching up now finally.
13. "Everything in the world exists in Africa"-why?
Africa encompasses the entire range of data from rich countries to poor countries. From Niger all the way to the left of the graph to South Africa all the way to the right, Africa has it all. This prevents a universal solution for Africa as Africa is so different across the board.
14. At
15:56 you see these acronyms: Excel, Access, mySQL, XML, webservice and ODBC. Which of these are incorporated into the elab? Why? Check out
http://www.gapminder.org/ and imagine a 21st century stats class you might take…or teach.
Excel and Access are Microsoft products and so probably don't see much use at the lab. mySQL, XML, and webservice are heavily used in the elab as ways of transferring and storing data. ODBC is a platform for querying data on any platform. A 21st century statistics class would use technology and software platforms to display data in creative ways that would highlight trends and patterns not apparent in just the numbers alone.
15. What's the difference between "it's impossible" and "we can't do it"?
"It's impossible" means that nobody can accomplish the feat. "We can't do it" is a crap-loaded statement that people say when they do not want to try and accomplish something that can be worked out if they tried.
Qatar's income per person starts to go off the charts following World War II once oil starts to be in demand worldwide. As their population is so low, the wealth per person is really high. This value keeps growing right up until the 1973 oil crisis, which is where this number starts to flatline. Following the collapse of OPEC's control on oil (with the rise of other producers of oil such as Venezuela and Russia), income per person in Qatar drops until the First Gulf War, which is where it starts climbing slowly again.
For many of the Warsaw Pact countries (the Soviet Union included), per capita income grew very slowly during the Cold War years while they were still under the influence of communism. Following the shift to a market economy in these countries, the pace of economic growth picked up and has sustained itself at a new higher rate since then. A similar trend can be seen with China once they no longer followed a planned economy in the 1970s.
Japan's trail does some crazy things during the war years. Life expectancy and income per person took a huge drop from just 1943 to 1945 due to deteriorating conditions from the effects of World War II. 1945 to 1946 sees a huge jump again, this time in life expectancy due to the arrival of Allied forces and American occupation, bringing with them medical supplies and food. By the end of the decade, Japan is back on par with many of the developed countries in terms of both where it is on the graph and the eventual rate of growth that it reaches.
hoang phong
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