Go to the Catalog
You are viewing a complimentary preview of this book. For options to unlock the full book, please login or visit our catalog to create a FlatWorld Account and see purchase options.
Business Information Systems
Design an App for That

v2.0 Raymond Frost, Jacqueline Pike, Lauren Kenyo, and Sarah Lebovitz
Request a Review Copy

1.3 The Global Ignorance Project

Global Ignorance

The Global Ignorance Project was started by Hans and Ola Rosling. Hans Rosling is a professor of global health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and the cofounder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation. Ola Rosling, his son, also is a leader at Gapminder. The Gapminder Foundation’s mission is to find fact-based patterns about developing countries that differ from what the general public thinks is true. Then they disprove these common myths. Rosling’s video below uses surveys of Swedish and US citizens and the media to reveal inaccuracies in prevalently held assumptions about developing countries. Most of the results are surprising. Take the Global Ignorance Pretest, then watch the video, study the rules of thumb and take the posttest.

Global Ignorance Pretest: Are You Smarter Than a Chimp?

Based on the Gapminder Foundation Global Ignorance Survey

  1. How did deaths per year from natural disasters change in the last century?

    1. More than doubled

    2. Remained the same

    3. Decreased to less than half

  2. On average around the world today, men ages 25-34 have spent eight years in school. How many years on average have women that age spent in school? 

    1. 3 years

    2. 5 years

    3. 7 years

  3. In the last 20 years the percent of people living in extreme poverty has…?

    1. Almost doubled

    2. Remained about the same

    3. Almost halved

How Not to Be Ignorant About the World by Hans and Ola Rosling

How to Avoid Global Ignorance: Rosling’s Rules of Thumb

Rosling created the following Rules of Thumb to avoid global ignorance. As long as you follow these principles, it will be harder to be tricked by the sources of misconception that are listed below. The Rules of Thumb are:

  1. Most things improve throughout the world.

  2. Most people and countries fall somewhere in the middle of a normal distribution.

  3. Social reforms happen first, and then countries get wealthier.

  4. “If it bleeds, it leads.” The media tend to overreport tragic events, which in turn exaggerate public fears.

These Rules of Thumb help decrease the knowledge gap between public notions and the real truth about developing countries. You can explore real data for yourself on Gapminder.org.

Rosling’s Rules of Thumb

Hans Rosling, Gapminder.org

Source of Misconceptions

Personal Bias—the neighborhoods in which we grew up are not representative of the entire world

Schools—use outdated teaching materials

News—exaggerates sensational events to get headlines

Intuition—people overly rely on intuition

By contrast, the Rules of Thumb shown below in pictures challenge each of these misconceptions. The illustrated version of the Rules of Thumb is that most things improve (up arrow), most people are in the middle (camel’s hump), social reform drives wealth (girls in school, then wealth), and tragic events are not so prevalent (shark attacks are very infrequent).

Rosling’s Rules of Thumb

Rosling’s Rules of Thumb

Source: Free material from www.gapminder.org

Group Application 1.3: Gapminder Posttest

Based on Gapminder Foundation Global Ignorance Survey. (Source: Free material from www.gapminder.org.)

Gapminder Graph

  1. In 1950 there were fewer than one billion children (ages birth-14) in the world. By 2000 there were almost two billion. How many do UN experts think there will be in 2100? (Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs)

    1. 4 billion

    2. 3 billion

    3. 2 billion

  2. There are seven billion people in the world today. Of the maps shown here, which one do you think shows best where they live in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia? (Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs)

Option A
Option B
Option C

  1. What do you think is the life expectancy in the world as a whole today? (Source: World Health Organization)

    1. 50 years

    2. 70 years

    3. 60 years

  2. What percentage of adults in the world today are literate (i.e.,  can read and write)? (Source: The World Bank)

    1. 40%

    2. 60%

    3. 80%

  3. Which of the curves shows the present income distribution of all the people in the world today? (Source: Utrecht University: Centre for Global Economic History)

Option A
Option B
Option C

  1. On average around the world today, men ages 25-34 have spent eight years in school. How many years on average have women that age spent in school? (Source: The Lancet)

    1. 3 years

    2. 4 years

    3. 5 years

    4. 7 years

  2. What percentage of the world’s one-year old children is vaccinated against the measles? (Source: The World Bank)

    1. 20%

    2. 50%

    3. 80%

Taking Screenshots

Some assignments in this book require you to submit an Excel file and some will require you to take screenshots. For those assignments that require a screenshot this section will help you. A screenshot is essentially a picture of all or part of your computer screen. There are different ways to take screenshots, which depend on whether you have a Mac or PC and what programs you have installed or might want to install.

Macintosh: Macs have built-in screen capture capabilities.  

To capture the entire screen, press Command +Shift+3.

To capture part of the screen, press Command+Shift+4 and drag the crosshair to select the desired area. Both of these methods will put the screenshot on your Desktop. To copy the screenshot to the clipboard instead, hold the control key in addition to the keys noted above.

Screenshot Tool on Mac OSX

PC/Windows

There are several ways to take screenshots on a PC. You can use the built-in Snipping Tool, Snagit or the Print Screen button.

Snipping Tool The easiest method to use is the Snipping Tool. Most PCs with Windows Vista or later have the Snipping Tool. To see if you have the tool, you can check Accessories or do a search for “snip” in the Start Menu.

Snipping Tool

Snagit For a great image and video screen capture program, we recommend Snagit. You can download a free trial of Snagit by going to www.techsmith.com/snagit.html and clicking the blue “Free Trial” button. Once downloaded, you open the program and use the program to capture your whole screen or part of your screen and more.

Snagit

PrintScreen The PrintScreen (PrtScn) button will capture the entire screen and copy it to the clipboard. Hold the Alt + PrtScn buttons to take the screen shot and then right click and Paste or Ctrl + V to paste the screen into your document. Once pasted into the document, double click on the image to bring up the “format picture” options, and use the crop tool to adjust as necessary.

PrintScreen

Exercise 1.3: Excel Challenges I

These assignments are designed to get you ready for an internship or job. Some of the tasks that knowledge workers are often asked to do is to summarize, rank, and sort data. If you are a sports fan then you are already very familiar with these concepts; sports broadcasts continuously quote summary statistics. All industries utilize data, so the ability to find usable information from data is an imperative skill.

Please follow the directions in each of the individual worksheets (tabs) in the file to complete each Excel challenge. The accompanying video tutorials will walk you through how to complete some of the steps in the worksheets, but you will be challenged to complete them on your own. When you have completed all of the challenges, you are finished with the exercise. Add your name on the first tab (at the top) and submit your completed Excel file online.

You may work together with those around you, but you MUST complete your own assignment and do the steps and typing on your own computer.

Follow this link to the Excel file and video tutorial: http://tinyurl.com/zm59sa9