Why you might want to Japa – a short data story.
I started writing this article that highlights the long term benefits of staying healthy while working your 9-5, and while I was searching the Internet for data, I came across some pretty disturbing health facts that have been bothering me for a while.
My research led me to a site called Our World in Data, and while I was analysing the data I found, I got a bit interested in the life expectancy info. They had data on every country in the world and guess what I found out; fellow Nigerians, we may, in fact, have one more reason to leave this country.
Now how did we even get here?
I was trying to find out the exact details that showed how the quality of healthcare and life expectancy in general was declining with time in a bid to make an argument for staying healthy and practising health routines especially in an economy that thrives on the 9-5 system. In fact the title of this article should be how to stay healthy as a 9-5er. This site has health related data, so it had to take a bit of deductions and co-relations to prove the inference. It collects data on different countries and different continents which was quite interesting. As a business analyst, I love me some data. The only problem was:
- My whole premise wasn’t just flawed, it was wrong. It didn’t match the data presented here because the quality of life was in fact increasing globally.
- By globally, I mean everywhere except Nigeria.
To be fair, not just Nigeria. The records show, roughly, from the year 1977 – 2020, that the life expectancy range for Nigeria had stayed at one spot despite the immense change happening everywhere else in the world. I think the most depressing fact is the actual number that we sit at. Did you know that life expectancy range for Nigeria is 56 years?
Let me explain what life expectancy is for anybody who doesn’t understand. Life expectancy is the calculated measure that defines the average life span of a population over a time period. By that definition, the average life span of an average Nigerian is expected to be 56 years?
This didn’t sit right with me, so I started checking other data. I went back in time with the data, as far back as I could go to when the only country that had a record for life expectancy was somewhere in the United Kingdom. And then I start to weigh the yearly results. It appears, from the data, that we were all at the same average at the point in time. Guess what the average was; 56! Wow!
I’m not even trying to find out what happened to Nigeria, at least, not in this post. I just think it makes little more sense to me now why people might have to relocate. Do you want to know the countries with the highest life expectancy in the world right now? One of them is Canada, with a life expectancy rate of 76 years. That means I have better chances of living that old in Canada than in Nigeria. Why did nobody tell me? What am I doing here???
Obviously, I’m not tell you to leave your country or anything. All I’m saying is look at the data. There is a lot more than “greener pastures” when it comes to deciding where you want to spend the rest of your life. Some locations are just designed to drain your efforts, your creativity, and as we now just discovered, your very life force.
But overall, I think the star of the show is the data, itself. Is it not amazing how some random exposure to accurate and compelling data can change not just your perception, but your decision making? This is something I’m familiar with. A data set can change everything.
So the next time you’re wondering why you need data or data analysis for your business, remember this story. Remember how I started this whole journey with an uninformed perspective and how I would have written a whole article on assumption. And then remind yourself that there might be a lot of uneducated decisions you’re making in your company that might be counter-productive because you’re deducing rather than analysing.
Schedule a meeting with us today and let us help you with your data.
