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!
This post may include affiliate links.
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.
One million seconds is less than 11 days.
One billion seconds is more than 31 years.
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.
Mao utterly, completely failed to lift anyone out of poverty; the success began under Deng Xiaoping.
If the oldest living person is 115 years old, then 116 years ago there was a totally different set of humans on earth.
95% of the ocean and 99% of the oceans floor remains unexplored
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.
During the battle of the Somme in WW1, the British Army lost 20,000 men...on the first day.
Whole generations and towns were wiped out in the space of hours
4/3 of americans don't know fractions.
8% of people pronounce Wi-Fi as wiffy...8%. I don't know who you are, but I will find you...
“Wify” or “Weefee” (short “e”) is pronouced in Slovakia as well (just with one F). As many other english words we have taken over where is “i” because we pronounce it here as english pronounce “e” and not “aj” 😁 Tried my best to explain it 😀 I think also Czech and Hungarian do it as well (Poland too?) and i think many other european countries, so i think it will be more than 8%. I just realized that in english pronuciation i heard it only in America, everywhere else i just heard “wify” 😀
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.
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!
It makes me optimistic that there may be life out there, and possibly intelligent life. On the flip side, it took almost the entire life of the planet for intelligent life to appear. The earth is thought to be 4.543 billion years old. Early on, the planet was an uninhabitable ball of magma and took a while to cool and for liquid water to appear. The first life appeared 3.77 billion years ago, the first multicellular life appeared only 600 million years ago, the first dinosaurs appeared 243 and 233.23 million years ago, and the first Homo sapiens dated back to 300,000 years ago. The first civilization appeared only 4,000 to 3,000 BCE. This is relatively late as Earth can probably only support life for only another 150 mil-1.5 billion years until the sun gradually brighteners and vaporizes our planet's water depending on what models are used. If it is only 150 mil years or much less if we do it first. This means that intelligent life formed kind of at the last minute for our planet.
The leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States is being murdered, and most often by a current or former romantic partner.
https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20010320/number-1-cause-of-death-in-pregnant-women-murder
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.
Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the building of the great pyramids.
Someone in the world [passes away] of starvation or malnutrition every three seconds.
If you picked a random Swede and a random Canadian, the Swede would be more likely to speak English than the Canadian.
There is a fence in Australia that stretches the equivalent distance of London to New York.
There are two long fences! One fence cuts off the south-east quarter of the country and is intended to stop dingos. It's about 5,600km, which is slightly longer than the distance from London to New York. The other fence cuts off the western part of the country and is intended to stop rabbits and other pests. It's about 3,300 km, so a fair bit shorter than the distance from London to New York. Obviously the post is referring to the dingo fence.
40% of Americans cannot afford a $400 USD emergency.
I can't deal with the fact ppl have to think about money when ill or hurt. I hate that. All I'm concerned about is getting to the hospital. They might make me wait if it's not as urgent as others but I'm gna get all the scans, meds and surgeries I need.
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.
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.
That's why neutering and/or culling feral populations are extremely important. Lots of people don't know how destructive to the environment cats really are.
Where do they take them out? To a cafe? to the park? Tell us, Bored Puritan staff.
Hm, they probably Netflix and kill. (...I'll see myself out lol)
Load More Replies...
And this is just ONE reason why cats should not be allowed to roam. Keep them indoors and have an enclosed outdoor cat run. Desex your cats so we don't have an influx likely to be abandoned or taken to shelters. Be a responsible pet owner. Over 20 of our vulnerable species have been made extinct due to cats and foxes and responsible for making other species endangered/vulnerable etc. https://pestsmart.org.au/toolkit-resource/impact-of-feral-cats-in-australia/
I have 2 desexed and microchiped cats and 1 microchiped and desexed dog. I believe people who breed cats and dogs should be required to desex them prior to sale unless they can adequately show the animal was sold as a breeding animal to stop unplanned animal pregnancies. Both dogs and cats should be registered. Responsible pet ownership is a must. (To clarify, I am not well off but allocate money to my pets well being and could not afford them to have babies and couldn't live with myself if I had to dump them) I understand that animals are therapeutic but if you can't afford the bare minimum requirements, the best next option is to volunteer at animal organisations. I don't know how hard this would be to regulate but we have to start somewhere. On a side note, the birds my cats catch occasionally are pigeons, never natives, the natives seem to forage better than the pigeons.
neutering is great, but if you don't keep eyes on your cats while they're outside, you don't have any idea how many natives they're killing, please consider keeping them indoors
Load More Replies... I don’t know about other states but in Queensland it’s illegal to let your cat outside. They attack birds/koalas/possums and we don’t like it
Yet, humans kill more. Not directly as in this sense, but by destroying and polluting the environment (decreasing insect population, irritating birds due to urban light pollution, cutting down trees where birds might breed,...). (I'm not saying that the cat issue shouldn't be taken seriously, but I sometimes feel a reminder is needed that humans are the most destructive.)
"But he kicked me, too!" One bad thing doesn't make another bad thing better. Stop killing birds and stop letting your cat roam around unobserved.
Load More Replies... 
In the US alone, domestic cats kill 1-4 billion birds per year, as well as 6-22 billion mammals. These cats are also depriving wildlife of its natural prey, and the cats themselves can become victims of predators. I've seen and heard it happen. Keep your cats indoors, please. They do not need to hunt to survive.
Where do they find the time? All of the cats I know spend about 23.978 hours per day sleeping - is there just 32 seconds of mad bird-murdering frenzy when all the feral cats in Australia wake up and think "IT'S GO TIME!", slaughter as many birds as they can, and then go back to sleep?
Feral cats kill on average 6 animals a day, times that by over 20 million feral cats and you have a massive problem on your hands.
Load More Replies...
Can't blame a car for being a cat. We will kill the earth before they do.
I do, too. I used to be on the "outdoor-cat"-side, but I've recently realized that it's such a bad side to be on. Even if I wouldn't care about all the birds and small animals they kill: they sh*t in other people's flowers, in children's sand-pits and sometimes enter other people's houses just because they're curious! They don't care and their owners apparently also don't care. So ... better keep the fluffy beasts inside your property and create a fun place for them and everyone gets to keep their happiness.
Load More Replies... There are roughly 22million feral cats in Australia. Each one eats up to 6 native marsupials per day, it’s a big problem here, also a big reason why I’m not a cat person
We moved several years back. Have been keeping cats out of the yard and neighbours know to keep them away. There has been a noticable increase in small wildlife (birds, small lizards, amphibians...) There are also poisonous amphibians (enough to kill a cat) and mid sized predators which hunt cats. If you have a cat keep it in. There is not much point in putting up a missing cat poster hereabouts, it has very likely been eaten or caught something that poisoned it.
Our yard is cat-free, too. We have dogs who don't like cats... One cat nearly got itself killed (and it HAD known about the dogs so it was truly its own fault) for sitting in it, and we didn't have a cat-visitor since then. I like cats - I don't want them to be killed by our dogs! (Not to mention all the legal mess it will create!)
Load More Replies... 
Cull is the correct term when it comes to mass killing a specific set of animals for certain reasons such as environmental impact, transmissible diseases etc.
Load More Replies...
same in u.s.....they are one of the worst invasive species on the planet!
The church outlawing cats in the Middle Ages directly lead to the massive toll of the Black Plague. So maybe just don't take cats away from places where they historically roamed. Because cats ARE animals and will behave as such!
I have outdoor cats (UK). They get the majority of their food from hunting. I don't see how it's any better that some industrial process kills the animals for their food than the cat itself. And from what I've observed, nearly 100% of the creatures they kill are considered vermin or on the General Licence, so actually helping in their small way to manage unwanted pests. The real problem around here is urban foxes harming pets and occasionally small children and causing property damage and mess.
The difference is that most of the animals humans consume are farmed and not endangered or vulnerable species. Cats don't just kill vermin and you will find that many native Australian animals are small, even vermin looking but they are not and they are protected species. Cats are responsible for killing approx 6 animals a day and we have over 20 million feral cats across Australia and millions more pet cats that irresponsible pet owners allow to roam. Cats and foxes are responsible for the extinction of numerous native animals. Our eco system is actually quite fragile and just can't cope.
Load More Replies...
keep your cats indoors, folks! if you can't give them suitable enrichment without letting them into fragile ecosystems (and also traffic), maybe don't get a cat to begin with :)
You guys are all very mean to cats I see like alot of bird each day so if cats didn't exist guess how many bird will be her
Cats are not native species to Australia and they are literally killing many of our native animals to extinction. It is necessary to protect our vulnerable animal species.
Load More Replies...
Look at global bird population decline. It's terrifying. Even scarier is the decline in insect populations
That is an absolutely tremendously enormous amount. Are there any estimates to how many feral cats there are in Australia?
It is estimated that there are over 20 million feral cats.
Load More Replies... 
one reason while I will probably never have an outdoor cat.our two cats have already killed some mice in our house and I saw it conceit made me sad cause I kinda like mice:(
Guess how many chickens humans eat per day? There’s zero comparison how harmful we are to the environment.
Chickens are farmed. Cats are killing our vulnerable native wildlife.
Load More Replies... Think of all the worms and insects that are saved, though, because the cats are taking out the worms'/insects' worst predator. Every cloud . . . . . has a silver lining.
They're not eating most of it. Cats just like to hunt.
Load More Replies...
I wish people would keep their cats indoors. In my old neighborhood, we had tons of lovely little bunny families. We would feed them all the time. We loved them! Then someone with a couple cats moved in and we found dead bunnies everywhere, and they manages to kill off all of them. I do not like cats. If you have them, please keep them inside!
This seems like an extremely high number. The studies these numbers are based on use estimations of cat numbers and estimations of bird numbers. I'm not doubting science, I would just like to see a better study. There was as much as 40% variance in the factors explaining the "uncertainty in estimates of wildlife mortality" https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380#Tab1
I understand that "feral" cats are a huge issue in some places like Australia, linked to the extinction of over 20 animal species. These are feral cats. Not domestic cats. Studies from the UK have shown that, although cats kill millions of birds each year, there is no evidence to suggest that such high mortality rates are causing bird populations to decline. In fact most garden bird populations are increasing. Birds that are at risk are so, mainly due to habitat loss and environmental issues. Cats are cats. They need to be outside exploring their territory and hunting. It's cruel to leave them locked up inside. Stick a little bell on it if you wish to reduce your cat predation.
Even pet cats are a problem, they kill over 200 million of animals per year. Maybe look at the studies on Australia, NOT the UK, since this is what the post is about. There is plenty of evidence to support cats causing the demise in our native animals, including birds. And no it's not cruel to have them as indoor cats otherwise vets, animal rights organisations, animal welfare organisations, etc wouldn't recommend it. It's actually better to keep your cats contained, preferably indoors but with access to an enclosed outdoor cat run etc. You thinking it's cruel are YOUR personal feelings, not facts. Another thing is that contained cats generally live longer and healthier lives.
Load More Replies... It sounds harsh, but feral cats really should be culled, just like we do with other feral species. They are much more destructive than feral dogs, because they are so much better at hunting. Just because we like cats and people have them as pets doesn't mean they should be allowed to destroy native species all over the planet.
Also - a dog (a real dog, not a cross between dog and something else) basically wants to be a dog. They love humans and would prefer to live with them even over their own brethren. So it'd be much, much easier to get a feral dog tamed and homed than a feral cat. Cats are not domesticated in the same way as dogs are. Dogs just want to be Good Boys or Girls.
Load More Replies...
We have TC ie trap and cull. Returning them after neutering them won't change much so they have to be culled.
Load More Replies...
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.
That sharks have been on this earth for some 450 million years. 450 Million Fucking Years!
"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/
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.**
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...
90% of people live in the northern hemisphere
Likely due to the estimation that 68% of the Earth’s land exists in the Northern Hemisphere, while 32% is located in the Southern Hemisphere.
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.
So far, 46 people have [passed away] by lawn mowers in the U.S. this year. 46.
More [lives are taken away] by vending machines than by sharks.
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.
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.
The average number of legs, for humans, is less than 2.
But consider this - since there are always pregnant people, the average number of skeletons in a person's body is always above 2.
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.
Who is giving them diclofenac? Or is it some naturally occurring thing?
In the year 8000 B.C. there were 5 million humans on Earth.
Why is there a photo of a contemporary indigenous gathering to illustrate a post about "8000 bc"?
Greater Tokyo has a larger population than Canada.
And every other sane country with gun control had less mass shootings than America
The existence of the T-Rex is closer in time to today than it is to the existence of the Stegosaurus.
92% of Downs Syndrome foetus' are aborted once detected by screening (in Europe).
The population of the world has doubled since the mid 70's.
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/
The battle of Stalingrad alone claimed significantly more lives than all the US servicemen killed in our nation's entire history.
The Vatican has 2.3 popes per square mile.
if jenny is walking in the vatican, and has walked 5 square miles, and there are approximately 2.3 popes per square mile, approximately how many popes has jenny trod upon?
1 in 4 people in the UK suffer from a mental health issue.
Among a random group of 23 people, theres a 50% chance two of them share the same birthday
Ants have a larger biomass than humans.
Note: this post originally had 81 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Had to stop reading the list because most of these stats don’t have sources cited and that’s frustrating. Am hoping some helpful Pandas will fill in the gaps with proper sources and more info (and thanks to all who do!)
I have to agree with you Emiloy. A lot of the joy and interest in reading this kind of post is diminished due to lack of sources cited!
Load More Replies...
Agree and of these fact-checked? Bored Panda definitely has a history of unchecked, inaccurate “facts”...
BP never fact checks, or edits. They only protect us from the words meaning unalive. Because THAT is the true issue in life!!!
Load More Replies...
The one single point in this list that should be the "moral of the story" is the one that 4/3 Americans don't know fractions. Or, in general, math. Because the number of top commenters who completely screwed up their math with their arguments against each point is astounding. #facepalm
Honestly, this post made me realise the world sucks. And it all goes back to men making decisions for women. Banning abortions, saying the so called "baby" is an actual human(mind you, it is not, even scientifically, it doesn't think or have feelings). I genuinely want to scream. Like, come on people.
Genuinely curious, at what point does it become a human to you?
Load More Replies... Had to stop reading the list because most of these stats don’t have sources cited and that’s frustrating. Am hoping some helpful Pandas will fill in the gaps with proper sources and more info (and thanks to all who do!)
I have to agree with you Emiloy. A lot of the joy and interest in reading this kind of post is diminished due to lack of sources cited!
Load More Replies... Agree and of these fact-checked? Bored Panda definitely has a history of unchecked, inaccurate “facts”...
BP never fact checks, or edits. They only protect us from the words meaning unalive. Because THAT is the true issue in life!!!
Load More Replies... The one single point in this list that should be the "moral of the story" is the one that 4/3 Americans don't know fractions. Or, in general, math. Because the number of top commenters who completely screwed up their math with their arguments against each point is astounding. #facepalm
Honestly, this post made me realise the world sucks. And it all goes back to men making decisions for women. Banning abortions, saying the so called "baby" is an actual human(mind you, it is not, even scientifically, it doesn't think or have feelings). I genuinely want to scream. Like, come on people.
Genuinely curious, at what point does it become a human to you?
Load More Replies... 