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.
*More empty houses. There's a difference, a home is a concept of safety that comes from the life outside and inside that structure. A homeless person doesn't just need walls and a roof, they need proper jobs, medical care, education etc.
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Homelessness is a complicated issue which wouldn't be solved by just putting people in houses. They would need other forms of help to be able to live as "functioning" members of society. All that would require compassion, which is in very short supply in the US.
We're running low on stocks of compassion in UK too, sadly
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Doesn't change the statistical accuracy of this fact.
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why doesn't the US government take action against homelesness and help these homeless people and let them live in these homes? At least we'll be equal in one spot...
This doesn't bother me as much as the fact that people are perfectly ok with spending $35k a year on keeping an inmate in prison but not on helping homeless people. This just boggles my mind.
Especially considering a good 40% of those prisoners shouldn't be in prison in the first place.
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A functional economic system will work to naturally bring things together which need each other. House, meet family. Doctor, meet patient. Job, meet worker. If those things are kept apart from each other, then whichever economic system is in place does not work.
Because, oh my, that would be socialism!! God forbid a country looks after it's people!!
I think part of it is more like God forbid a country steal houses that are empty but are legally titled to someone and then give them to someone else. Houses sit empty for various reasons and not all are able to be lived in so that homeless could just move in. And not all homeless people are of sound mind or physical body to be able to maintain a house.
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That doesn't really help if the homeless people and the empty houses aren't in the same place though. Unless we're planning to start trucking homeless people off to towns they've never been to, away from anyone they know, just so they can have a building to shelter in.
In the USA *everyone* wants a brand new McMansion, they don't care about land or how close they are to their neighbors, it's all about square footage, thus they avoid buying an older (2+years) home.
Not true at all. Most people can't afford a big house, especially a new house.
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YES! And it's criminal. Banks, cities and communities would rather leave houses to rot that step up and care for humans having a rough go.
A lot is an old unit of weight equaling about 1/2 an ounce. Which would be a very small home.
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Wow, so many untruths & stereotypes of who is homeless in the US & why in these comments! Empty homes are useless if no one can afford to live in them. A 2007 academic study called “Ending Homelessness in Los Angeles' identified three broad categories that precipitate individuals’ fall into homelessness: loss of material resources, loss of family or social connections, and loss of health. These categories often overlap: **22% of respondents lost their dwelling, 18% lost their job and 12% lost welfare benefits. Domestic violence was cited by 14% of respondents**, while 7% noted an inability to find shelter, often due to release from prison. Sickness or injury were cited by another 12%; drug or alcohol problems by 8%
Jerry - You're spot on here. I'm not sure why some people think that many of the homeless would have the ability to just move into a home and fix it up and maintain it.
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Just not in the same place, I guess. One in large cities, the other on the countryside.
Homelessness in the US has never been about a lack of housing. The vast majority of the homeless suffer from serious mental illness and/or substance abuse. There are ample well-funded facilities to house them run by both government agencies and charities. However, unlike in many other countries where these people would be forcibly locked away against their will, in the US these people have the right to live however they choose. And unfortunately in far too many cases they actually choose to live on the street.
Can confirm. Google "Mass and Cass" (Boston). Not even a half-mile from there is a five-story tall apartment building, completely boarded up.
I did research on this for a speech for class. There are 5.1 million unused buildings/homes in the usa. We have plenty of space to house homeless/unhoused people
I think empty houses belong to someone, but I think it's a sin that where I live, the government very frequently razes "nuisance" houses. Why not make them habitable and give them to any family brave enough to live there. Lives would improve, neighborhoods would improve, and I doubt it would cost much more to rehab the house than to demolish it, because that doesn't come cheap.
It can cost more to rehab a house if it's been abandoned for years. Houses are not meant to sit unoccupied for long periods - plumbing rusts, walls get mold, etc.
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Continually empty or because someone just moved out and about to be preoccupied as soon as the next tenant answers the new ad? Do these include every one with a For Rent sign in the yard for a few weeks?
Deontology vs Consequentialism. These philosophies have been debated by intellectuals for hundreds of years, and still haven't reached a resolution. It judging an action looking at its actions itself and whether it is ethical, or if the action causes the greatest good for the most people?
It's because they are either bank owned or hoarded by rich, absentee owners who use them for a write off or wait until it's gentrified and sell it at an inflated price. Bank foreclosures sit empty forever, and the banks will often let them go to s**t. The brief moment in time when I thought I could afford a home opened my eyes to bank foreclosures. It was depressing to see properties left to rot after banks who received bailouts because of their own greed, turned around and evicted many without even working with people. Approximately 10 million Americans lost their homes, but our government bailed out Wall Street to the tune of 29 trillion. We are a country that runs on evil.
The third possibility, which happens frequently, is that the owner died without a will or the will is being contested by the family. Houses that are in probate can sit for years. It took me 3 years to get the courts to complete probate on my mom's house -- granted we could go in her house since we were in her will -- but not all probates are so cut and dry.
Load More Replies... houses r way to expensive! me and my husband r living with his parents in a basement apartment bc just getting an apartment is ridiculous here in new york. im on long island and its not as bad as the city but still. we r living here while saving up until we have enough. im on disability so it makes things tricky but still my basement apartment has enough room to the point where im hosting my first holiday on christmas. 16 ppl can easily eat and hang out comfortably down here so im not complaining. do i want to live in my in laws house forever? no of course not. can i? yes. the problem is once i have kids and reach the 3 kids mark then we gotta start looking for our own place. a bunk bed could work for 2 kids but only wen they r little as it is. houses r so expensive now tho thats the problem
Kids are expensive so you'd be better off to keep it at the 2 kids mark, not 3.
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That's just one of many reasons Capitalist Greed is destroying this planet.
Why would I want a homeless person in my property? Seriously. Why should I be responsible for the bad choices someone else made. Don't tell me "you could become homeless too", because no, I can't and I won't. Because I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I have parents who made me go to school and get a degree and I work dilugently and seriously in a field that add value to the world. So no. Never. I'd rather burn it down.
Yeah and if they crash or squat in any of them, the law throws them all out. Nonsense
Capitalism has only caused the greatest leaps in human prosperity the world has ever seen. With capitalism, we've had massive increases in life expectancy, literacy, decreases in death from curable and preventable diseases, child mortality, deaths from lack of clean food and water, a massive decrease in poverty. This homeless situation isn't capitalism, it's big businesses having the government in their pocket.
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I believe there should be laws around if a house has stood empty for a certain amount of time it has to be put on the rental market.
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.
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
Note: this post originally had 54 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
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
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Thank you. I really think the US bashing is ridiculous. All countries have their problems and skeletons. It not just a US thing.
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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%
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