Hear This Idea

#54 – Edouard Mathieu on Our World in Data

Oct 15, 2022

00:00

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Code Is Much Better Than Code

04:26

Doomsday Clock

04:11

How to Use an Opportunity to Have Impact at OAID

02:53

Introduction

2min

Is There a Problem That You're Stuck On?

2min

The Curse of Knowledge

2min

What's the Pipeline Like for COVID?

5min

Vaccines - Why Isn't It Standardized?

2min

Did You Ever Get Insights of This?

2min

Is There a Dynamic Incentive to Collect and Report Diseases?

2min

Is the WHO Really Trying to Fix the WHO Pandemic?

2min

Is There a Coordination of Reporting for Pandemics?

3min

10.

What Institutions Did Really Well in Collecting Data?

4min

11.

How Did Governments Deal With COVID?

3min

12.

The Role of Data Visualization in COVID

4min

13.

How Country Comparisons Made Vaccination Faster

3min

14.

Is There a Pandemic Like That?

2min

15.

The Intermediate Stage of Epidemiology

2min

16.

Do You Need a Dashboard?

2min

17.

Is There a Difference Between Government and Government?

2min

18.

Is There a Pandemic?

3min

19.

What Do You Think We Can Learn From COVID?

3min

20.

Is There a Global Crisis Response Team That Can React Quickly?

2min

21.

Is the UN Calling the Shots?

2min

22.

Pandemics

4min

23.

Pandemic Preparedness

4min

24.

The Role of Data Collection and Data Standardization When It Comes to Existential Risks

3min

25.

Is COVID a Theory of Change?

4min

26.

Is There a Crisis Management Approach to Data Collection?

3min

27.

The Challenge of Maintaining a Good Website for World Data

2min

28.

Is There a Core Team of Maintainers?

2min

29.

Is There a Way to Do a Coordination Project?

2min

30.

Is There a Space for Data Collection?

5min

31.

The Value of Making the World a Little More Sane

3min

32.

Is the New York Times Making the World More Sane?

2min

33.

Is Everyone a Card Carrying EA?

2min

34.

The Value of Comparing Data on Problems

2min

35.

The Impact of Climate Change on the World

2min

36.

I Think It's a Good Idea to Have Good Charts About Education

1min

37.

Is There a Pandemic?

3min

38.

How Do I Show a Line Chart Which Is Probabilistic?

2min

39.

Is There a Like Reasoning Transparency in Forecasting?

2min

40.

Climate Change Forecasts - Is the UN Estimation Right?

3min

41.

Is There a World Dashboard for Probabilistic Forecasting?

4min

42.

Doomsday Clock

4min

43.

Is There a Benchmark for Image Net for Classifying Images?

2min

44.

Using Surveys to Track Attitudes to Various Big Issues

3min

45.

How Much of This Is Data Tracking?

2min

46.

How Do We Decouple GDP Growth and CO2 Emissions?

2min

47.

Climate Change and the Global Button of Disease Study

2min

48.

Are There Any Ideas for Data Visualizations?

4min

49.

Is This a Good Idea?

2min

50.

How Log Scales Translate to Linear Scale

2min

51.

The Value of Transparency

5min

52.

Is There a Problem With COVID Estimates?

2min

53.

Is Open Source Software a Good Thing?

2min

54.

Code Is Much Better Than Code

4min

55.

Getting to the Point Where You Can Publish Reports in Jupiter Notebooks

2min

56.

How to Use Github to Improve Your Code

2min

57.

EA Specific Objections to Making Everything Transparent

2min

58.

Is There a Space for Data Journalism?

4min

59.

FT Data Team

2min

60.

What Do You Think About Your Early Career?

4min

61.

Online Data Science Courses

3min

62.

What Makes for a Data Scientist?

4min

63.

What's Underrated in a Data Science Career?

2min

64.

When Should You Use an Area Chart Versus a Line Graph?

3min

65.

What's Your Favorite OHS Chart?

3min

66.

Is There Any Data Visualization That You Want to Flag or Highlight?

2min

67.

The Most Underrated Chart on the Hour of Data Website

2min

68.

Is There a Graph With Like Fish and Chicken Yeah Yeah Yeah

4min

69.

How to Use an Opportunity to Have Impact at OAID

3min

70.

Covid and the Data Team

3min

71.

What Are Your Top 3 Recommendations for a Data Scientist?

5min

72.

Philanthropy Giving Over Time

2min

73.

Philanthropy Scores - Where Can People Find You Online Most Twitter

3min

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/mathieu

Edouard Mathieu is the Head of Data at Our World in Data (OWID), a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality.

We discuss:

What Ed learned from working with governments and the WHO
A simple change the WHO could make to radically improve how countries share data for the next pandemic
The idea of 'experimental longtermism'
How Ed is thinking about collecting data on transformative artificial intelligence and other potential existential risks
Figuring out the impact of making everyone slightly better-informed
Lessons for starting a career in impact-oriented data science
And finally... Ed's favourite OWID chart

If you have any feedback, you can get a free book for filling out our new feedback form. You can also get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us a review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!