Factfulness

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think is a 2018 book by Swedish physician, professor of international health at Karolinska Institute and statistician Hans Rosling with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund. The book was published posthumously a year after Hans Rosling died from pancreatic cancer. In the book, Rosling suggests that the vast majority of people are wrong about the state of the world. He demonstrates that his test subjects believe the world is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it actually is, attributing this not to random chance but to misinformation. Rosling recommends thinking about the world as divided into four levels based on income brackets (rather than the prototypical developed/developing framework) and suggests ten instincts that prevent us from seeing real progress in the world. Bill Gates highlighted the book as one of his suggested five books worth reading for summer 2018, offering to purchase a copy for any 2018 college graduate upon request. The book Factfulness has not only been praised, but criticized for presenting a too positive picture of global conditions, especially environmental matters and inequalities in human societies.