“Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell”*…
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the state of the world; but it does pay to stand back, look at the big picture, and check that pessimism against long term data… which is what our old friend Hans Rosling helps people do. A statistician who specializes in data visualization, here he uses snowballs and toys to explain (to the BBC) the state of income inequality:
Special bonus: watch Dr. Rosling disabuse WEF-Davos attendees of their misimpressions about sustainable development.
* Walter Bagehot, English economist (1826-1877)
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As we remind ourselves that regression can be a useful thing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1908 that Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition unloaded the first automobile in Antarctica (an air-cooled Arrol-Johnston two-seater). Shackleton had hoped that the car would speed his progress to the South Pole; in the event, it didn’t perform in the extreme cold.
The expedition’s engineer, Bernard Day, testing the Arrol-Johnston on the Ross Sea Ice Shelf