It was intriguing to watch the Hans Rosling's video again. I first ran across the video a few years back as I was browsing through TED talks looking to be inspired. I work in an industry that throws around massive amounts of data and statistics to determine how well the sequencing performance was [I work for a biotech company that designs next generation DNA sequencing technology]. Coming from a non-science background, I often find myself struggling to make sense of a bunch of numbers presented in a slide. With Gapminder, Han's and his team have developed an amazing application that can take mundane and convoluted date and provide a powerful visual representation of the information. In our global economy, with countless data points to pull from in determining your marketing plan, it is extremely important to ensure that the data being pulled together makes sense.
Problems with the human mind
One interesting problem that we deal with in an infinitely connected world, is that we think we know more than we do. Daniel Kahneman wrote a great book titled, Thinking Fast and Slow, which showed two different pathways of human thought. A significant insight that Kahneman pointed out, was that individuals make a lot of errors in their thinking. The average person will make a judgement call on a fact based question pulling from erroneous information that they have stored in their brain. This type of incorrect intuition can reek havoc on our decisions in business if we do not take a standardized approach to viewing data and drawing conclusions based on the data.
Data Overload
The beauty of Han's tool is in its simplicity. He is able to show that through visualization techniques, we are able to make better sense of the data and thus draw more conclusions. If we are stuck with drawing conclusions based on just numbers on a page, we may allow our preconceived beliefs lead us astray. At times, it may be hard for us to accept the facts as they are stated because of these beliefs.
The techniques and ideas listed above are immensely important in viewing the macro-environment as become too trustful of our "instincts". As current or future marketers, we have the responsibility to ensure the market research is conducted in a way to pull a significant amount of data. Once all of the data is pulled together, it is then extremely important to look at the data from many different angles to ensure that incorrect conclusions are drawn. The more time and effort given upfront with the market research can pay significant dividends on the backend when properly applied.
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