Remembering all the math I did in high school, I can only say that looking at numbers can be confusing. Or just boring. But sometimes, they can offer you a better understanding of the world than a news show. And in a much more entertaining fashion, too.
In October, Redditor u/alexbbtkd asked other platform users, "What's a crazy statistic?" and has received plenty of answers. We've combed through all of them and picked out the most surprising ones just to broaden your horizons. So put on your smarty pants, get a notebook, and enjoy!
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If you were to compress earth’s existence into a 24 hour day, life would first appear at 4am, plants would first appear at 10pm, dinosaurs from about 11pm-11:40pm, and humans emerge at 11:59pm.
From Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”
You are more likely to be bitten by a stranger in New York City than by a shark anywhere else in the nation.
You are more likely to be killed by a vending machine than by a shark.
What we can learn from this is that strange vending machines in NYC should be avoided at all cost
That the Catholic Church hid a (now self) reported 8.4 child rapes per day for over 71 years.
WTF. ONE is bad enough but over 8, and every day. Seriously that is so f****d up. Those poor kids.
That there are A LOT more empty homes in the US than there are homeless people.
I don't doubt that it would be the same in Australia. It's morally criminal that there are people living on the streets when there are so many empty houses. And if a homeless person goes into one of those houses they can be charged with trespassing.
40% of homeless are employed.
The top 10% of drinkers account 60% of all alcohol consumed in the US. And they drink the equivalent of 74 drinks per week.
So the entire alcoholic beverages industry is kept alive by severe alcoholics.
This is so sad. Alcohol is protected by long standing human custom and sometimes religion, and seems to be exempt from the common classification of a 'drug'. In NZ in level 4 covid lockdown (the first one, most extreme lockdown), we couldn't get takeaways etc delivered. Or go get them. We could only order essential items online, and children's winter clothing was added to the list after a while. BUT: alcohol delivery was all the time, even in level 4. To your door, advertised everywhere. More available for delivery than food. More essential than almost every item, even at one point more important and legslly available before being able to buy clothes for your child. This isn't about the lockdown, the point I'm making is that it was, almost unspoken and nationwide, a 'necessity'. Every other drug (street, pharma, tobacco etc) is treated so differently, but they are no different to alcohol. It is such a juxtaposition and it really upsets me sometimes EDIT: I understand that alcohol dependency is serious, and a person can die without alcohol when they are seriously addicted. That was not the point I was trying to make: I meant the free for all that governments and society allows on alcohol, despite it being a drug like any of the ones they ban/regulate/monitor. It's that unfortunate attitude around alcohol that leaves so many people dependent to the point where alcohol was essential during lockdown, despite no acknowledgement of why that needed to be available
There is more actual lemon in Lemon Pledge cleaner than there is in Country Time lemonade
More first responders and survivors have now died due to 9/11 related illnesses than the number lost at Ground Zero on the day of the attack. The number will continue to rise because of the huge amount of health problems caused by the dust and smoke that everyone in the surrounding areas inhaled when/after the towers fell.
Also, the number of fatal traffic accidents in the United States increased after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for a period of 12 months due to flying avoidance.
The U.S government has 'misplaced' six thermonuclear warheads. They were either lost or stolen in transit and at this juncture, one of the largest nuclear superpowers in the world has no idea where they are.
It is estimated that bears kill over two million salmon a year. Attacks by salmon on bears are much more rare.
It's a fact that there are more airplanes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
The most common cause of death for pregnant women is homicide
40% of cops are domestic abusers
86% of British people live within 8 miles from where they were born.
There are more combinations in a 52 deck of cards than stars in the known universe.
39% of the world's population is overweight and that number is only getting "bigger"
If you were born in 1923 in the Soviet Union as a male, you would have an 80% chance of dying in world war II.
In the US, you are more likely to be killed by a cow than you are to be killed by a coyote.
Your more likely to be killed by a cow than all the stereotypical deadly Australian creatures put together.
Humans, (Homo sapien sapien), appeared on earth ~200,000 yrs. ago and didn't reach a population of 1 billion until 1804. About one hundred years later, 1920's, there were 2 billion. We now add a billion people to the planet every 12 years.
And people act asif having multiple children is a good thing.
Load More Replies...Yet people still claim they need to reproduce to keep the population going. I’ve even seen reproducing compared to being a firefighter on Bored Panda - someone said by them choosing to have children they were doing an essential service that child-free people didn’t want to do, in the same way firefighters do an essential job that others don’t wish to do.
How many do we lose each 12 years? My mind wonders but my fingers won't google LOL
My fingers googled since I randomly decided to be a useful couch potato at this moment. About 60 million people die every year, and that times 12 happens to be 720 million 🤔
Load More Replies...I think and don't quote me that the most populated countries have large populations of the poorest citizens without access to sex education, contraceptives and abortion. Then there are religions that don't believe in contraceptives and abortion. Add all that up plus other factors I'm likely forgetting and we have a huge problem. Also, people live longer (at least in "developed" countries) than they did 100 years ago.
Anti vaxxers are helping to decrease the population. Only cure for stupid is death.
Yeah those debunked and discredited theories no serious academic uses anymore. You know the Earth can house 100 billion without straining resources at current scientific advancements? We have a resource effiency problem, not a population one https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/larahoffmans/2011/10/31/7-billion-reasons-malthus-was-wrong/?sh=4c9dbaf6b7e8
Load More Replies...Exponential, uncontrolled growth in a population free of competition never goes well; ecosystem collapse and epidemic/pandemic are most common, but we're also stupid enough to add war and other human made issues.
There will come a point when humans will have wars over water and the ensuing famine will get us back down to under a billion.
Religions have to scrap no contraception, and encouraging large families.
I was today years old when I learned that our scientific name is homo sapien sapien.
Yeah but they refuse to cover the costs of all birth control or wanted sterilization.
So many people have already. I believe that the world's population is going to shrink in the future. Quite drastically, I believe.
Load More Replies...On the other hand, our proportional increase is slowing down remarkably, and we're likely to start shrinking by 2060. In fact, while overpopulation is still a crisis in East Africa, Banglandesh, and certain other nations, declining population in China, East Asia and Europe is a bigger threat to global security, health and well-being. Finance is based on increasing scarcity ensuring rewards for investment in efficiency, making economic recessions inherently self-limiting as inevitably increasing demand is certain to break any vicious cycles. A gradual slow-down of growth might well allow financial and economic practices to adapt, but a sudden reversal in population, as predictable for most of the Northern world, could be catastropic.
When living things are not fighting for food or their lives on a dailey basis, the reproduce. So these numbers suggest that we have decreased death risks.
I once said that there are more people (meaning Homo sapiens) alive today than have ever died, and they didn’t believe me. Don’t know if that stat is still true, or if it was just a chain email, but I feel like the numbers check out.
In Norfolk UK a footprint found has been dated 800,000 years old!! So 200,000 is not right
That trend is reversing. Our population will growth has slowed dramatically and population will soon start declining
That you can fit all the planets in our solar system between the Earth and the Moon and still have some room spare.
Mind blown
More energy from the sun hits Earth every hour than the planet uses in a year.
1 in 3 Australians will be diagnosed with a skin cancer by the time they're 70.
Edit. Google search actually says (multiple times) that "at least 2 in 3 will be diagnosed with skin cancer by 70"
F*ck.
Slip, slop, slap, seek and slide is our motto. Also no hat, no play for primary schools.
We are closer in time to the birth of Cleopatra than she was to the construction of the Great Pyramid
I’ve seen this one appear on these lists many times, and I don’t know why it’s so interesting to people. I don’t associate Cleopatra with the pyramids at all except they are both from Egypt. That would be similar to being shocked that we are closer to the birth of Gandhi than he was to the building of Taj Mahal just because they are both from India.
According to the FBI, there are currently more than 25 active serial killers in the US
The United States "land of the free" incarcerates more citizens per capita than any other country: US: 629 inmates per 100,000 citizens
Compared to other countries: Cuba: 510, Brazil: 381, Russia: 326, China: About 250, Mexico: 169, UK: 131, France: 100
Broccoli has more protein per calorie than a steak.
Not quite. 3 ounces of broccoli is 31 calories and 2.5g of protein. 3 ounces of New York strip is 195 calories and 18g protein. I suppose if you're using a much fattier cut of steak maybe. Regardless, you'd need to eat over a pound of broccoli to get the same amount of protein as the 3 oz portion of steak. And the broccoli is an incomplete protein anyway, so there's no real comparison...
1 out of 25 people are sociopaths. No automatic sense of empathy.
Obligatory "Sociopath does not immediately equal violent and/or serial killer" comment
There are approximately 78,000,000,000,000 000,000 atoms in a grain of sand.
Men are about 7 times more as successful at suicide than women.
Human life expectancy has increased more rapidly in the past 50 years than in the past 200,000 years.
According to the bible that's not quite true. Apparently Noah lived to be 950yo, Methuselah was supposedly the oldest living human that died at 969yo. Lol.
20% of produce and fruit in the usa is never sold and is left to rot
One in seven Americans receives food from food banks or similar sources.
"44% of older Millennials already have a chronic health condition."
As many as 95 percent of millennials are "not saving adequately" for retirement
Well what do you expect. A high percentage of millenials will also never own a house. Can't save money you don't have.
Statistically the deadliest job in the US is president
Forty of the 46 people who have held that job are deceased. That's 87 percent mortality, right?
From 1970 to 2000ish, US median household income and home prices were on an almost perfect straight line (r=0.997 and r=0.987 respectively). Using the regression line (y=ax+b), the predicted median income in 2021 was 75k and the median home price was 194k. Actual median income is 67k and median home price is 330k.
The average drunk driver has likely drove under the influence 80 times before arrest.
Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, and there are about 2 Trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
You actually lose money when you put it in savings accounts because the apy (annual percentage yeild) does not match inflation of the dollar.
To put it simply. You put 100 dollars into a savings account on January 1 2020 with the national average apy of .05% and leave it for one year. Your interest will have gained you 5 cents. In that same year, the US dollar inflated (lost buying power) by 1.23% It may appear as if you had a gain as your balance shows 100.05 however that amount now has the same buying power as 98.82 one year ago.
Got to spin this one around. Yes you are losing money over time BUT if you don’t invest it or put it into savings then that $100 will accrue zero interest and thus be worth even less after a year. It’s a about finding the least worst scenario. You could go high risk and invest in stocks that make a larger return but ultimately lose everything, you could go medium risk and invest in safer stocks and break even but still have a small risk or you can put it in a secure and safe account that at least diminishes the losses and guarantees that you get your money back.
Statistics show that men have about a one in two chance of developing cancer during their lifetime, while women have a one in three chance.
Humans only eat 40% of all the corn produced in the world. The remaining 60% is used in a wide variety of products, from fuel to toothpaste.
you are 5x more likely to get struck by lightning than be 7ft tall
The human brain processes visual information in 13 milliseconds, which is apparently 60,000 times faster than processing text
How you are more likely to die in your bathtub than a roller coaster
35 percent of all US dollars were printed in the last 12 months
80% of Australia’s population live around the coastal areas.
That's because the closer to the centre you get, the more uninhabitable it is.
A fire will double in volume every 14 seconds given unlimited fuel.
There are more airplanes on the bottom of the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
These threads are interesting, but I feel I have to check the facts on every post. And it seems lots of readers don't bother to do that. Scary.
Fun website giving perfect examples: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Load More Replies...Thank you. I really think the US bashing is ridiculous. All countries have their problems and skeletons. It not just a US thing.
Load More Replies...None of these statistics mean anything without a citation saying where the information came from.
If you took all the arteries and veins in one man's body and laid them end to end, that man would die.
Do not believe any statistics you did not fake yourself. I do not have any use for these as none of them provides background or cites the sources.
More proof, if you needed any, that statistics as a subsection of math is stupid, pointless, and as the saying goes "can be used to prove anything".
You can twist statistics to support just about any viewpoint you want.
*Citation needed. My understanding is the correct figure is 100%
Load More Replies...There are more airplanes on the bottom of the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
These threads are interesting, but I feel I have to check the facts on every post. And it seems lots of readers don't bother to do that. Scary.
Fun website giving perfect examples: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Load More Replies...Thank you. I really think the US bashing is ridiculous. All countries have their problems and skeletons. It not just a US thing.
Load More Replies...None of these statistics mean anything without a citation saying where the information came from.
If you took all the arteries and veins in one man's body and laid them end to end, that man would die.
Do not believe any statistics you did not fake yourself. I do not have any use for these as none of them provides background or cites the sources.
More proof, if you needed any, that statistics as a subsection of math is stupid, pointless, and as the saying goes "can be used to prove anything".
You can twist statistics to support just about any viewpoint you want.
*Citation needed. My understanding is the correct figure is 100%
Load More Replies...