

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - sthomps
http://blog.sokanu.com/200-countries-200-years-4-minutes

======
chroma
The original video link (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo>) was
submitted 5 days ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315>). Then a
slightly different url
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jbkSRLYSojo#!))
was submitted 10 hours ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202>)

It seems quite unfair to me that the person who submitted this content first,
and did so without linking to their own blog, gets none of the recognition and
karma. While 100% of sthomps submissions
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sthomps>) are links to his own
blog, where he mirrors or links to the original content.

I just said it (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974170>) but I'll say it
again: I think this is a flaw in HN's ranking scheme. If the original link
isn't upvoted quickly, it never gets on the front page. After that, the
rewards (recognition, traffic, and karma) go to people who mirror the original
content or simply link to it from their own websites.

~~~
mike-cardwell
How would you improve the ranking system?

~~~
chroma
I don't know of a complete fix, but a start would be to rank based on upvotes
in the past hour (or 2 hours, or whatever works best) instead of since
submission. This would allow links submitted days ago to end up on the front
page if they were recently upvoted a lot. The new algorithm could be put on an
alternate front page (similar to <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>) until
it was tweaked to get the desired result.

Since detection of duplicates and content mirrors is currently done best by
humans, I think another aspect of the solution is cultural. If we want to stop
this sort of thing, people need to point out mirroring/linking and flag
submissions. If we do it enough, the incentives will change to discourage this
behavior.

~~~
eru
Sounds like a good solution that would also decrease the asymmetry between
first submission, new submission and up-voting. (There's one asymmetry that
we'd like to keep: Who gets the karma, but the asymmetry of those actions on
ranking aren't as interesting.)

------
Indyan
He gave a similar presentation at TED. It's a lot longer though.Check it out.
-> Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html)

More stuff from Rosling: -> <http://www.ted.com/search?q=hans+rosling>

~~~
forza
In the documentary Swedish national television made about him, he says this
regarding that TED video:

 _"If I count the number of minutes I've been teaching, this video teaches
more than anything I've done in my life. All the articles, books, courses...
None of it can compare with this one video. That's a humbling experience."_

The documentary is now available on youtube, with English subtitles:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7howQzatw>

------
linhat
His visualization reminds me A LOT about gapminder
(<http://www.gapminder.org/world/>), if anyone wants to play with this kind of
data with this kind of visualization.

~~~
a-priori
Shouldn't be surprising since Hans Rosling (the guy in the video) co-founded
Gapminder.

------
dmvaldman
This data, and tons more, has been available through Google's public data
explorer (<http://www.google.com/publicdata/home>)

Albeit, without an enthusiastic British (Edit: Swedish!) guy's explanations...

~~~
daliusd
Swedish (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling>)

------
tdok
It's interesting that around the 70's the Asian countries (mostly China)
spiked in life expectancy but still are at the same income level. There's a
year where China's life expectancy just drop dramatically. I wish he had
explained why.

~~~
tdok
Just found out that it's the Great Chinese Famine
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine>)

------
nathanwdavis
Nice use of sound effects too!!

------
gcb
Income is not linear. So the disparity in income today is less evident. Thus
helping paint the picture of a perfect future.

That and the selection of medians for thing like income and life expectancy
makes that a very poor data viz choice. But a very good motivational talk.
Really Ted material...

~~~
InclinedPlane
Income is not supposed to be linear. It makes it easier to see the
relationship between log(income) and life expectancy visually.

