Exaggerated Numbers

"Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper"

 - Khalil Gibran

The first part of this article is mostly based on a TED talk (this) and second part is based on application of the concept this talk introduces (Yeah, I do some homework before writing).

Most people tend to perceive that the current world is truly global and boundaries are fast shrinking. Well, let’s try our belief with some statistics. And here are some of the numbers based on the following components that would normally represent a global world. a) Phone Calls b) Immigrants c) Export GDP

Take a guess at the percentage of all call-minutes made in the world, of which would be international calls. Like you, most people guessed it as: 28%. And now take a guess at the percentage of first generation immigrants to the US. A guess, which sounds reasonable, is 8%. And now, finally take a guess at the percentage of Export GDP of all countries put together, for last year. Most people guessed it as: 30%. Now let’s do some fact checking. The total percentage of voice call-minutes made last year, summing up all the international call minutes is: 2% (YES). The total percentage of first generation immigrants to the US is about: 0.33% (Oh, YES). Finally, the global export GDP of the world last year was at 19% (somewhat near to the guessed number).

I further applied this fact checking method on two scenarios, which people have confidently spoken about with me. Let me rephrase the below two sentences in a generic way. The first one, “Of the total number of doctors in the US, doctors of Indian origin must easily be about 40%”. My light reading of an article about American doctors and percentage of people by ethnic groups revealed that this number is about 5%. Of course this is an over-representation, considering the fact that people of Indian origin amount to only 1% the US population. The second one, “In India almost everyone speaks English. At least 50% of Indians speak English”. It is an outrageous statement and only if you are one of those elitists, you would make such a wild guess. The reality, just about 12% Indians speak English. More than 99.99% of this 12% speak it as a second language, not first.

It is fairly clear to me that we all tend to conclude the situation, based only on our surroundings and less by taking into account the facts. And this exaggeration of numbers is not just restricted to people from one country, but for each part of the globe.

PS: I didn’t make up these numbers. I spent nearly three hours reading from official sources. You can either trust these numbers or do your own research J