We all know that statistics can lie. And these days what with fake news and all, checking your stats can be a full time job. But, just because something sounds crazy, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Today we’re going to go through some data points that might make your head spin. Here are 25 curious statistics that will mess with your view of the world.
Following 9/11, there were an estimated extra 1,600 traffic fatalities on US roads than what would be statistically expected. Researchers believe this was due to people changing their habits to avoid flying, which ironically turned out to be more dangerous in the end.
Source: mpg.deThe amount of money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for solar panels on the roof of every house in America. ($1.467 trillion divided by 132 million households = $11,000 per household spent on the war. 2.5 kW panels cost roughly $10,000)
Source: washingtonpost.comSince 1960, the world population has doubled
Source: geohive.comPine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota is essentially a third world country. Life expectancy is 47 years for males (lowest in the western hemisphere) and unemployment is over 80%. Most of the population lives without running water, sewage, or electricity. Also, the infant mortality rate is 5 times the US average.
Source: msnbc.comMore American soldiers die from suicide than any other cause
Source: theatlanticwire.comThere are more people in Bangladesh (156 million) than in Russia (143 million)
Source: geohive.comOf all the mammal species on Earth, 20% of them are bats (a little over 5,000 total mammal species and about 1,000 bat species)
Source: scientificamerican.comA neutron star is so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from 1 meter above the surface, it would slam into the ground with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs
Source: kurzgesagt.orgIf you head in any cardinal direction from the town of Los Algodones, Mexico (north, south, east, west) then you will end up in the United States.
Map data ©2017 GoogleIf the Sun all of a sudden exploded into a supernova, it would be a billion times brighter than a hydrogen bomb exploding right in front of your face
Source: what-if.xkcd.com2 out of every 3 Australians will get skin cancer
Source: cancer.org.auEvery 2 days humans generate as much information as we did from the dawn of human history all the way to 2010
Source: Eric Schmidt, CEO of GoogleAn average cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds (roughly equal to 100 elephants)
Source: mentalfloss.comSamsung accounts for roughly a quarter of South Korea’s GDP
Source: techcrunch.comIn the last 40 years, Earth has lost 50% of its wildlife
Source: theguardian.comThe US has 3.5 million homeless people and 18.5 million empty homes.
Source: businessinsider.comNote: as some people have pointed out, it may be more desirable to be homeless in California than living in an abandoned house in Detroit. So no, this problem isn’t as fixable as it may seen.
For the past 15 years, nearly 20% of the daily searches conducted on google have been novel. In other words, every single day 20% of the search phrases people type have never been typed before (that’s about 500 million searches per day)
Source: cnet.com50% of “Canada” consists of the letter “a” (eh)
Although some people brag about how environmentally conscious they are because they don’t travel or fly planes, agriculture contributes significantly more to greenhouse gases than transportation.
Source: un.orgYou are more likely to be killed by a toddler with a gun than by a terrorist
Source: snopes.comCanada has the 4th largest air force in North America coming in right after the US Air Force, US Navy, and US Army.
Source: vice.comIf you live to be 90 years old, you will have lived for only 5000 weeks. That means you only had 5000 Saturdays.
There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way. In fact, there are 30 times more! (There are 3 trillion trees and 100 billion stars)
Source: scientificamerican.comThere are more people in Greater Tokyo (38 million) than in all of Canada (35 million)
Source: geohive.com80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t live to see 1946
Source: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet/Note: the common “Buzzfeed” statistic is 80% but this is incorrect. See the source for more information.
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Image Credits: 1. Unknown via commons.wikimedia.org CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, 2-9. Public Domain, 10. respres via Flickr CC BY 2.0, 11-14. Public Domain, 15. Kerrie Brailsford via commons.wikimedia.org CC BY-SA 2.0, 16. Public Domain, 17. Map data ©2017 Google, 18. Thomas Rosenau via commons.wikimedia.org CC BY-SA 2.5, 19. shellac via Flickr CC BY 2.0 , 20. Marmelad via commons.wikimedia.org CC BY-SA 2.5, 21. Public Domain, 22. Kmusser via commons.wikimedia.org CC BY-SA 2.5, 23-25. Public Domain.
