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Some, like mathematician Roger Antonsen, believe that numbers are the key to understanding the world. (Antonsen even gave a brilliant TED talk to explain this statement, which I highly recommend.) And there's a Reddit thread that vividly illustrates the point.

It started when platform user JustinMGH made a post, asking others to share facts and stats that sound like obvious exaggerations but actually aren't.

Immediately, people started delivering fascinating, weird, and even disturbing titbits of information, changing each other's perspective about everything around them, even if ever so slightly.

#1

21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread The difference between million and billion is huge (relatively): 1 Million seconds = 11 Days 1 Billion seconds = 31 years

TheIshark , Sarah-Rose Report

MargyB
Community Member
3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Was only quoting this today to a workmate, scary!

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    #2

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread The budget to send to the Curiosity Rover to the Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for thirteen hours

    anon , Robert Sullivan Report

    #3

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Cleopatra was alive closer to the Moon landing than she was to the construction of the great pyramids.

    anon , Christopher Michel Report

    Tabby_Sohee
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I’ve heard this one a hundred times and it blows my mind every single time… what a history

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    #4

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread USA citizens privately own more firearms than all countries combined. Even more than most militaries.

    ChikNoods , Jamal Fanaian Report

    #5

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died less than a year apart less than 150 miles away from each other.

    LibraryLass , Ann Longmore-Etheridge Report

    Captain Kyra
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Barbara Walters, Anne Frank, and Martin Luther King Jr were all born the same year.

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    #6

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread The original height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly 29,000 ft high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 ft in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.

    Chiper136 , watchsmart Report

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    #7

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread The typical cloud weighs 1.1 million pounds

    anotherpoweruser , C Dustin Report

    #8

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.

    anotherpoweruser , Signal Corps Archive Report

    Nea
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I so wish this was a massive exaggeration.

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    #9

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread 1 in 2 Australians will get skin cancer in their lifetime

    Wibbles20 , Caleb Russell Report

    #10

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Neutron stars are so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from one meter away it would hit the surface in a microsecond with the force of 1,000 nuclear bombs.

    Endless_Vanity , Kevin Gill Report

    ThatG
    Community Member
    3 years ago (edited) Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    One teaspoonful of this matter weighs more than 3 billion tons. If we were capable of dropping a small piece of neutron star onto the ground, it would slice through Earth like a bullet through cotton and come out the other side.

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    #11

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread The state of Maine has more Black Bears than black people.

    The_Real_BenFranklin , Patrick Connelly Report

    oktopus
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    This does actually appear to be more-or-less correct, depending on the estimation of the bear population and the accuracy of the first Maine demographic statistics which popped up in a quick web search. Also, with the same caveat, there seems to be approximately one black bear for every square mile of Maine.

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    #12

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Vatican city has a population of 2 popes per 1 square kilometer.

    Darghy , Presidenza della Repubblica Report

    #13

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread More silent films have been lost than saved We live in an era where everything is saved, and it's hard to imagine such a massive loss of creative material. Plenty of films are lost, as late as the 1970s too.

    ahhh_zombies , Richard Hsu Report

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    #14

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Monsters Inc was released closer to the fall of the Berlin wall than to the present day.

    setsomethingablaze , HarshLight Report

    #15

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people in the world.

    Rheul , Anton Darius Report

    Headless Roach
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Also, they work extremely hard and live only about 8 days, while turtles don't do shït and get to live 150 years. Let it sink in.

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    #16

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Nintendo existed at the same time as the Ottoman Empire.

    roussell131 , Minh Hoang Report

    #17

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread You could walk from North Korea to Norway and only pass through one other country. Also, your feet would be a little sore.

    SexAndCandiru , Samuel Rios Report

    #18

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in *all* the radio waves we have *ever* collected from outer space.

    Andromeda321 , European Southern Observatory Report

    #19

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread In a room with 23 people there is a ~50% chance that 2 people share a birthday

    Phllips , CONG TY THIEN YOGA Report

    waddles
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    funnily enough, my twin and i don’t share a birthday, or even a birth month. she just LOVES to say “i’m a month older than you LISTEN TO ME I AM WISE”

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    Emma S
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I've met loads of birthday with my birthday. I went to school with two people who were born on the same day as me. That's what happens when your birthday is in September 🤣

    Alicia M
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Good point. I was getting ready to say that some months have way more birthdays than others. My birthday is in late January, and I rarely meet anyone with my birthday.

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    DEW
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I heard about this in school. Never had anyone had mine. Now I didn't know until I was in my teens that the neighbor I had lived next to for 15 or 16 yrs.old had my birthday. Also oddly enough when I turned 16 I was walking to my bus and found $16 all fanned out on the rain soaked ground. I started looking around and nobody was there. The money was wet from the rain. It really freaked me out to be honest.

    XenoMurph
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I was behind a guy in the supermarket, buying a bottle of whiskey. It's my birthday tomorrow he said, I'll be 49. The next day was also my 49th birthday. Weird. I didn't buy whiskey though. We had an interesting chat.

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    Vellami
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I remember sharing same birthday with 3 classmates in high school.

    harurand
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    does that mean that 46 pple in the same room there is 100% chance ? :p

    XenoMurph
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    No only if you had 367 people it would be 100%

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    the shy platypus from nextdoor
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Even though I googled it and I am not the worst in this kind of mathematics (sorry, I don't know how to call it in English, I'm not native) I still don't get how it works. Can somebody please explain? :3

    chi-wei shen
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    The calculation is as follows: For 1 person the chance is 0% or the chance that no one has the same birthday is 100%. For the 2nd person the chance of having a different birthday than everyone else is 364/365 (I use the rounded value 365 to make it simpler). For the next persons the chances are 363/365, 362/365 and so on. For person number 23 the chances are 343/365. If you multiply these numbers (365/365 x 364/365 x … x 343/365) you get a chance of 49.3% for all of them having different birthdays and 50.7% that at least two persons have the same birthday.

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    Apatheist Account2
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I share a birthday with Graham Norton, Jonathan Agnew and Robert Downey Jr. We're so similar.

    Squidiotcats
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    My sister and I share a birthday. She's 3 years younger than me.

    LizzieBoredom
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    and a lot of them will be related depending on which state you're in.

    Michael Largey
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    At my age, on my birthday I'm generally in a state of depression.

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    Alditekim
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Birth DAY? Yes, easy to coincide. Birth DATE is less likely.

    Luna Crow
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Somehow this one sounds especially made up. That's fewer than two people born the same month, if split evenly. How is this figured?

    KnightOwl
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I was at a training course for my job when someone mentioned this, there were 12 people in the room and we all proceed to say our birthday's. There were 2 sets of 2 people who shared the same birthday as well as 3 people who all shared my birthday. So 2/3rds of the people there shared the same 3 birthdays! Crazy.

    L1z4rd
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    At work in my team of 13 people there are two shared birthdays. I share a birthday with someone in January, and two others share a birthday in July

    Susan De Nimes
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I work in a team of 7. Three of us shared a birthday.

    Rob D
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I've heard this before. Can anyone explain the math behind it?

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    #20

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, every two days human beings create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.

    mortal19 , Chatham House Report

    Tothetaint42
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Doesn't make any sense. Needs better context

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    #21

    21 Facts That Seem Fake, But Are Actually Real, As Shared In This Online Thread Samsung is responsible for 25% of South Korea's GDP

    klxander , DennisM2 Report

    Abby
    Community Member
    3 years ago Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I see that. smart phones ,watches. appliances, TVs. and used by so many ppl. I hope the new fridge were getting comes with some free kimchi.

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