When Olof Gränström took the stage of the Romanian Athenaeum in May 2023 and presented a graph showing the impressive evolution of the standard of living in Romania, the room was buzzing. “Here you are. You are one of the richest countries in the world,” drawled the Swede when the animation reached the present day. The hall laughed – not loudly, but politely, as they laugh at a guest’s humorless joke.

During his lecture, Grenström, an analyst specializing in data interpretation, showed statistics on Romania’s development by various indicators. All in all, a very good development. She tried several times to convince her listeners that she was rich. I didn’t have time.

It often happens with him. Olof Gränström has worked with statistics, graphs and tables all his life. They collect them, process them, and then create stories to tell people, to explain to them how things are going in their countries and in the world. This is also done in order to show why very often we misperceive the reality around us.

It’s an increasingly necessary mission in a world facing information and data inflation, making information, once highly valuable, an increasingly weak currency. The problem is how to manage this excess so that we can still understand how things are going in the world.

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