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The Numbers Game: 48 Statistics That Put The World In Perspective
This post is basically a tribute to the sometimes undeservedly underrated branch of science known as statistics, which is all about collecting, analyzing, presenting, and interpreting data. From governmental census data to financial data and planning, business, sports and weather forecasting and much more, statistics is used in virtually every aspect of our lives.
It keeps us informed and in touch with current events by giving a unique perspective on facts and their relation with each other.
So in order to show us all how it was not worth it to skip stats class back in high school, we are diving into some of the most interesting threads on Reddit where people shared the most intriguing, random and mind-blowing statistics. Get yourself a cuppa and enjoy this entertaining bunch of random data below!
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#1
20% OR MORE of pregnancies end in miscarriage. 20% is just "known pregnancies" and doesn't take into account all the women who just think "oh, my period was a day late, weird" without realizing they've actually had a very early miscarriage. That is stunningly high compared to what we've been led to believe. If you think of all the women you know who either have or have tried to have children, there's an excellent chance that several of them have had a miscarriage before. When you realize exactly how common it is, it makes it that much more sad that it is so stigmatized. If we talked about it more, maybe it wouldn't catch so many people off guard.
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#3
The percentage of the Chinese population living in extreme poverty (living below 1.90$ a day) went from over 80% in the early 80's to 1.4% in 2014. In fact, it was still 23.1% just 10 years before that, in 2004. It's the most massive lift out of extreme poverty in world history.
#4
If the oldest living person is 115 years old, then 116 years ago there was a totally different set of humans on earth.
#6
Only 2 percent of people truly enjoy their jobs. The rest are in it to eat. So the next time you hear some a*****e on TEDTalk tell you to follow your dreams and your passions, remember that he is probably part of that very small percentage of people who have that luxury to fail.
#9
8% of people pronounce Wi-Fi as wiffy...8%. I don't know who you are, but I will find you...
#10
The average person in canada has a higher net worth than the average person in the USA. The median income for canadians is about twice the median income for americans.
#11
Astronomer here! One that has blown my mind is statistically it is now believed that every star has extrasolar planets around it. It turns out every one near us does, at least. At the very worst case, Kepler has shown that 70% of all stars have a planet orbiting its parent star at Earth's distance or closer. Further, per the Kepler mission data it is now believed 17% of all stars have an Earth-sized planet around it. I mean, we knew there were a lot, but this means there's at least a trillion planets in our own Milky Way galaxy. The thought makes me giddy!
#12
The leading cause of mortality among pregnant women in the United States is being murdered, and most often by a current or former romantic partner.
#13
Around half of all trans people attempt suicide at least once Also something like 1/3 of women with mental disabilities are sexually assaulted Edit: so about the trans statistic this does not imply that being trans is a mental illness!! The shocking part is how awful and widespread transphobia is, and it’s consequences.
#14
Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the building of the great pyramids.
#16
If you picked a random Swede and a random Canadian, the Swede would be more likely to speak English than the Canadian.
#17
There is a fence in Australia that stretches the equivalent distance of London to New York.
#19
If the earth was the size of a basketball then the atmosphere would be about as thick as a coat of paint. The only thing that separates us from the cold, harsh, vacuum of space is this comparably tiny layer of gasses that are held in place by gravity. Another interesting one is that the only thing preventing the Earth from becoming a barren rock not unlike Mars is the fact we still have a molten core that generates a magnetic field that shields the atmosphere from being swept away by the solar wind. When the core eventually stops spinning it's game over.
#20
Late to the party, but: Feral cats in Australia [take out] around 377 million birds per year. That's more than one million birds per day. One million. Per day.
#22
The first cities started around 12,000 years ago. The first evidence of writing started 6,000 years ago. Humanity appeared 200,000 years ago in its current form. So 94% of the time we've been on the planet happened before we had cities, and 97% before we had writing.
#24
"The wars in [the Democratic Republic of Congo] have claimed nearly the same number of lives as having a 9/11 every single day for 360 days, the genocide that struck Rwanda in 1994, the ethnic cleansing that overwhelmed Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the genocide that took place in Darfur, the number of people killed in the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004, and the number of people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- all combined and then doubled." http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/opinion/congo-war-ignored-vava-tampa/
#25
I've posted this before on a similar thread, but.. Had an Economics Professor blow my mind with this. Most people think of millions, billions and trillions relatively similarly. They are huge numbers and when talking about money not very many people really ever have to account with numbers that high to see the incredible difference between each. I think this does a great job of breaking it down. If you made **$1/second**, you'd be really really rich. At that rate, you would make: **$60** in 1 minute **$3600** in 1 hour **$86,400** in 1 day **$1 Million ($1,000,000)** in 11.574 days **$1 Billion ($1,000,000,000)** in 31.7 years **$1 Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000)** in 31,709 years For one person who makes a Million dollars every 12 days to pay off the US National Debt (21.461 Trillion according to www.usdebtclock.org), it would take over **680,506 years.**
#26
There are more possible combinations to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on earth... and if you started shuffling a new combination every second starting at the big bang, you'd still be shuffling right now...
#29
It takes an individual photon several millenia to go from the center to the surface of the sun. Then it takes only 8 minutes to reach Earth, and a couple days at most to leave the solar system.
#32
More infuriating than mind-blowing, but a commonly shared “statistic” is that 80% of women who make at least 6 figures do so through direct sales marketing, aka, MLMs or pyramid schemes, like Mary Kay, Amway, and Herbalife. The *actual* statistic is that 80% of *people* who make at least 6 figures *through MLMs* are women. There’s only about 200 of them, and they’re all at the top of their respective pyramids, but the first statistic is commonly used to try and entice new people into the company.
#33
I go to one of the top universities in the US, and I recently found out that 45% of our student population is in the top 5%, wealth-wise. I most definitely am not, and it made a lot of sense but was incredibly disheartening at the same time.
#35
99% of the wild African grey parrot population had disappeared since 1992. Solely due to the illegal trapping for the pet trade. Indian and nepalese vulture populations have declined by 99% since 2000 due to diclofenac poisoning.
#37
The existence of the T-Rex is closer in time to today than it is to the existence of the Stegosaurus.
#42
In the US if you do the following 3 things: 1. Graduate High School 2. Get and keep *any* job 3. Don't have a child out of wedlock You have a 75% chance of being in the middle class and a *98%* chance of living above the poverty line. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/
#43
The battle of Stalingrad alone claimed significantly more lives than all the US servicemen killed in our nation's entire history.
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