Data can be magical if the right interpretation is done. Hans Rosling proved it.
History, data, culture, analysis, stories… and Hans Rosling
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There is a common perception that data, quantitative methods and statistical techniques are used only in hard sciences and technical studies. That is clearly wrong: social scientists and historians too do that, with surprising results. Today, citizens trust data and tables (and ranks) a lot, (a) partly due to a credibility crisis in news media, (b) partly due to the rampant nonsense available on the internet and (c) finally due to a desire to seek “hard truth” – what can be better than numbers / ranks / league tables / leaderboards. There was a magician of statistics, who could pull out amazing stories using numbers, and do it simply. He was the late Hans Rosling who did 3 things – (1) Question why people trust stuff not backed by data, (2) Identify that data visualisation and presentation was to blame for people’s biased views, and (3) He brought moving animated nature to it. We have an embedded TED talk of Rosling (2006) here; click to view [Content belongs to TED and original can be viewed here] Historians can create magical insights using quantitative methods. There are many journals of that nature published today. It is important to not consider numbers “more important” than alphabets. But they can give miraculous results.
An example – Roman Studer’s paper (2008) on “India and the great divergence : Assessing the efficiency of grain markets in 18th and 19th century India). You can download it from Bodhi Resources page (Useful Reports – India and the World) He collected data on wheat and rice prices in Indian markets from 1700 onwards upto 1914, across 46 cities. We can see how massively tough this must have been. Finally, he got 70 “price series” and got an insight on integration of the various Indian markets that affected price fluctuations. He found that – Till 1850, prices in various parts (Bengal, northern India, western India) remained disconnected, showing unrelated spikes etc. Only after 1850 did they show a harmony in movement. The broader debate was – Why did Western Europe develop so much compared to rest of the world? One view is that India and China also were developed before the colonialists ruined them. Other view is that there really was something special about Western Europe. Studer’s hard conclusions can perhaps point to the fact that Indian agricultural markets (hence the economy) was already under-developed before the Europeans arrived. [That is very, very debatable indeed!] Broad idea is : data, facts and statistical methods, if used ingeniously, can lead to miraculous insights.
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