I suggest we formulate some of these comments &  send them to Hans + other
prog-people. At the very least I think the prog and associated Youtube clips
are a  great resource & energiser to start a course of lectures with (or
perhaps in the middle) - as a source for discussion and lots of loose ends
that students could follow in reports or dissertations.

JOHN BIBBY

On 8 December 2010 10:27, Allan Reese (Cefas) <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Popular presentations perpetually provoke practitioners.  Yes, but … .
> Harry Feldman’s last point did seem to me addressed by Rosling
>
> ·         His conclusion appears to buy into the fallacy that correlation
> is evidence of causation and draws a trajectory based on that assumption
> that ignores all other factors, some of which are patently relevant.
>
> Rosling was at pains to point out that data mining and correlations are a
> spur to thinking about the data, so he hinted at far more analysis than was
> shown.
>
> My BUTS (but thereby admitting Rosling has made me think):
>
> The animation of lifespan and income was introduced with the impression the
> top right area was somehow ideal.  I fear the display is fractal, and
> Rosling’s descendant in 2310 will have a similar display where all countries
> start in the bottom left and migrate mainly up and right.  What he
> completely avoided was the inequality on the logarithmic income scale, which
> I suspect has increased over the past two centuries. So his animation tells
> one – highly selective – story and it would be good to have another
> animation where the X axis is ratio (taking one country as the income
> standard).
>
> The discussion of “happiness” as expressed by tweets & twitters struck me
> as daft or ominous – were they really hinting at other applications for
> monitoring all traffic on the internet?  But can anyone suggest what the
> colored disco dots dancing behind the speaker were meant to represent?  My
> impression from the programme was it was electronic wallpaper not a graphic.
>
> On the general thesis of whether science is hypothesis or data driven,
> Rosling could have driven over the bridge to Denmark and noted the
> progression Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton as an example of data -> pattern ->
> inferred law.  History as fractal?  Simon Schama on the BBC this morning
> said children like to learn history as “one thing happening after another”
> but he’s just misquoting Alan Bennett, whose schoolboy better described
> history as “one ……. thing happening after another.”
>
> Allan
>
>
>
>
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