I recently bought the book Factfulness – Ten Reasons we’re wrong about the world – And why things are better than you think by Hans Rosland (with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund). The book is a fascinating read and I recommend it to everyone. Not just people working with data. Not just journalists. Not just “people from rich countries”. Everyone. Literally everyone who is able to read. This book changes the way you think about the world.

For those of you who don’t know Hans Rosling, he was a well known doctor, speaker, statistician and much more. He has delivered many famous TED Talks about poverty, growing population and other topics. Hans was able to deliver his message using simple statistics and charts. He’s also famous of pioneering the “bubble chart”, was was developed with his son Ola and his daughter-in-law Anna. An example:

You can find animated bubble charts in almost any serious business intelligence / data visualization tool. The book is the culmination of Hans’ life work and the last project he finished before his death in 2017. Using 10 chapters, Hans explains different instincts on why we perceive the world to be much worse off than it is in reality. In each chapter, he explains an instinct, along with some anecdotes of his travels – and he tells us how we can deal with this instinct.

The reason this book is also interesting for data professionals is because although it’s not a technical book, it beautifully shows how you can use facts and data to change people’s minds. A must-read.