If you read Bored Panda, you know we like data. If we're doing a story on a woman banning her mother-in-law from her house, we look at what experts have to say on family relationships. If we're writing about employees quitting on a demanding boss, we present surveys on worker needs.
Numbers help us humans to contextualize individual examples and show us how common or rare, loved or hated something is in a broader sense.
Interested in the big picture, they give us the big picture, Reddit user Awesomeguy256 posted a question to the platform, asking its users "What is the most interesting statistic?" Since then, people have left over 14,000 comments under it, many of which share fascinating information on everything from economics to the animal kingdom. Here are some of the best ones.
This post may include affiliate links.
More Vietnam vets [took their own lives] than [passed away] in the war.
The solution is to make the people who want to start a war do it themselves.
A black man in St. Louis is more likely to be killed by a police officer than the average US citizen is to get murdered at all.
Whether you think BLM is a bunch of horse s**t or not, Republican or Democrat, or whatever, this stat is pretty interesting. Mind you, a subset of the US population probably doesn't even believe that statistic is true.
80% of Orange Tabby cats are male.
Wearing a seatbelt correctly reduces chance of front seat passenger fatality due to front end collision by 45%. Seat belts save lives. For f***s sake people, wear them. Also airbags are more likely to cause injuries rather than prevent them when seat belts are not worn.
Hold up your hands and clap them together.
Wait one second, then do it again.
If you could plot the distance between the first clap and the second clap, it would be more than 800 kilometers.
This is because the Earth is moving around the sun, the sun is moving around the center of the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the Virgo Supercluster, and the Virgo Supercluster is barreling through the universe. When you add up all the velocities and compare the result to the cosmic microwave background (which is the closest thing we have to a universal frame of reference), it comes out to about 800 kilometers per second.
In the time it took you to read this, you've traveled farther than you'll ever walk in your life.
Statistically speaking the average person is a 30 year old Chinese man.
Also, statistically speaking, his name would be "Mohammed Lee". ('Mohammed' is the most common first name, and "Lee' is the most common family (last) name.)
The tallest giraffe ever measured (George) was 19 feet (5.8m) tall.
The longest crocodile ever measured (Lolong) was 20.25 feet (6.17m) long
So take the tallest giraffe you've ever seen, and then add a little, and you've got the biggest crocodile ever measured reliably with a tape measure down its back.
Herpetologists agree that sightings of crocodiles up to 23 feet are not unreasonable, but they're very hard to capture when they're that big. Therefore, no absolutely reliable numbers.
Sharks are older than trees. Sharks are at least 400 million years old, trees are sitting at 350 million years.
Edit: Also another fun fact, sharks are so successful when it comes to evolution and long term survival because of a trait called "Adaptive Radiation", which is a huge increase of species diversity in a short period of time. Modern sharks stem from an adaptive radiation that happened during the Jurassic Period about 200 million years ago. One of the newest modern sharks is the hammerhead, coming in at around 50 million years.
holy c**p. i has no idea they were THAT old. and yet, now they’re endangered due to our stupid overfishing. beings that have lived that long, now at risk of going extinct. it’s just sad.
That by almost all important measures, the world is a better place to live today than at any other time in human history.
It is true, when you look at the big picture, but even though it is better, it is still at great risk of becoming way way worse if we are not vigilantly attentive to those risks and do our utmost to mitigate them.
The greed factor in human nature allows a blind eye to be turned to any bad news. "As long as it doesn't hurt me, I'll keep doing it". Hence inflation and increasingly lower standards for the 98% non-elites.
Load More Replies...
Surprisingly unpopular fact. Particularly when it comes to the decrease in wars, and violent deaths in general, people will just flat out refuse to believe it. There are also people that say such information should not be spread because apparently people will stop trying to Improve.
Yes! When really, we need to have some hope that our efforts can pay off so that we'll feel motivated to keep making those efforts rather than just giving up in despair!
Load More Replies...
This is very true. Our standard of living is much greater than even the most powerful people in the past. Heat, Water, Lights availability of food, medical care.
What are these "almost all important measures", I would like to know. What is important differs from person to person.
Excellent point. I've been sliding on thin ice for ages now!
Load More Replies...
This statement is a very short summary of "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling, one of the most interesting books I have read. The motivation for the author for this book was that if we fail to see what has improved in recent human history, we will also fail to identify the solutions for the immense challenges that lay ahead for humanity.
Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of our Nature" is another one.
Load More Replies... There are still too many of us--the Earth's human population has doubled in the last 50 years. Very unsustainable.
Sadly, I'm quite confident that as a species, we've reached our pinnacle. Although, I don't expect I'll live to see the s**t-show.
Thanks. I can use that statement to explain "damning with faint praise" to non-native speakers of English.
I don't believe this. Considering how many women and children are living in homes where they are beaten, neglected, abused, where women are treated like sex-slaves with no autonomy. Treating women and children this way is not natural, normal, or traditional. Also, there are more slaves in this moment than all the African American slaves in the US combined.
What are these important measures? Really it depends on how you look at it.
Will you please tell this to the religious nuts at my job that keep rambling about how horrible everything is, everythings going downhill, and the apocalypse is happening tomorrow.
By any measure? Air quality. Water quality. Pollution level. Gun deaths by mass shooters in schools. Online bullying. So many more that makes that wrong.
Read again and pay special attention to the word 'almost'.
Load More Replies...
Does these measures include pollution, poverty, decrease life expectancy.....etc etc etc
Yes. It's only really since the 2008 crash that live quality is going down again versus gradual constant improvements since the industrial revolution 300yrs ago.
Load More Replies...
Oh really? If this is the best time, the rest must have been a piece of hell
There was also the time when you were allowed to kill someone intent on killing you.
The richest 1% dudes in the world have more wealth than the rest of the planet.
The world's 8 richest men have as much money as the poorest half, 3,6 billions people.
The average cumulus cloud weighs more than the Statue of Liberty.
I've seen this one before and it still amazes me. I guess I never thought of a cloud having any weight at all. HHmmmmm
Britain had more planes at the end of the Battle of Britain than at the beginning, because they were being made at such an incredible rate that it surpassed the losses.
If you're in a group of twenty-three people, there's a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday.
If you're in a group of seventy people, that probability jumps to over 99%.
My uncle, great-uncle and I all share a birthday. I wonder what the stats are for family members having the same birthday are...
3-4 billion people on this planet earn $2.50 or less per day.
I found out at a conference last week that 5 billion people don't have access to safe surgery.
It really shocked me. That's 5 out of every 7 people in the world.
That is so sad, if every person was a day, the people that have access to it would only be weekends, sorry for the weird analogy, that was just how my ADHD brain processed it
25% of California’s air pollution is from China.
wait, that’s actually really interesting. i want to know more about how it’s able to travel that far and still be potent. also a little bit saddening, seeing as how widespread pollution can get
Til the world record for children born to one woman is 69. She had 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.
America has about 5% of the worlds population but about 25% of the worlds criminals.
South America is moving away from Africa at about the same speed your fingernails grow.
Omg imperial systen is using nail growth as a kind of measurment now??
It would take 1.2 million mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood.
If all the humans alive right now lived in the same density per square mile as New York City, we could all live in the state of Texas.
Over 1 million earths could fit into the sun.
Size-wise, a particle of dust is halfway between a subatomic particle and the Earth.
86% of British people live within 8 miles from where they were born.
Fat leaves our body 86% through the breath. The other 14% leaves our body through water.
It takes roughly 170,000 years for photons from the Sun's core to reach the convection zone of the photosphere where it is released out into space. In other words, the Sun light you see is hundreds of thousands of years old.
The population of Ireland has not yet recovered half-way from the famine of 150 years ago.
The immediate effects of the famine saw a great many people [perished] from starvation or disease and others emigrate to avoid the same fate. The longer term effects created a breakdown in the social order which forced emigration and a consequent 100 year decline in the population. It's only in the last 50 years that the population has started to grow again.
If you and your spouse both have a divorce under your belt , and one (or both) of you have MORE than one divorce under your belt, the failure rate of your marriage is 93%.
85% of all Americans live within 20 minutes of a Walmart.
There are more trees on planet Earth than there are stars in our galaxy.
Considering another fact "there are more star in the universe than the sand grain on beach" i'am not believing this one
80 per cent of 80 year old males or older will have suffered or will face prostate cancer at some point in his life.
Eighty. Percent.
Yes, and it is similar for breast cancer. However, there are many very slow growing types of cancer. Most of these people die of old age, not cancer. Misleading.
25% of the earths crust is actually made of iron like in your cereal.
Note: this post originally had 65 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
Can we pretty please include a link that supports that "fact"? Stuff like women talk more than man is BS: "A review of 56 studies conducted by linguistics researcher Deborah James and social psychologist Janice Drakich found only two studies showing that women talked more than men, while 34 studies found men talked more than women.[6] Sixteen of the studies found they talked the same and four showed no clear pattern." https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/marriage-equals/201910/do-women-really-talk-more-men
These are just Reddit posts. So take it with a grain of salt but it isn't BP's job to fact check them.
Load More Replies...
This article had so many false posts. It actually bothers me even if it's for entertainment that posting falsehoods is such a flippant thing.
Huh, and here I was going around telling people it was 47.8%. Don't I just feel foolish now 😳
Load More Replies...
Can we pretty please include a link that supports that "fact"? Stuff like women talk more than man is BS: "A review of 56 studies conducted by linguistics researcher Deborah James and social psychologist Janice Drakich found only two studies showing that women talked more than men, while 34 studies found men talked more than women.[6] Sixteen of the studies found they talked the same and four showed no clear pattern." https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/marriage-equals/201910/do-women-really-talk-more-men
These are just Reddit posts. So take it with a grain of salt but it isn't BP's job to fact check them.
Load More Replies... This article had so many false posts. It actually bothers me even if it's for entertainment that posting falsehoods is such a flippant thing.
Huh, and here I was going around telling people it was 47.8%. Don't I just feel foolish now 😳
Load More Replies...