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Abstract:
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Hans Rosling and his colleagues have asked thousands of people: In the last 20 years, has the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty doubled, remained about the same, or been cut in half? Rosling mentions that in every country, less than 25% answer correctly, and only 5% answer correctly in the U.S. Steven Pinker has argued that "the world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being" and also that "almost noone knows about it." In this talk I suggest that statistics teachers can make a positive impact by introducing students to such data and making them aware of cognitive biases that prevent people from recognizing progress.
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