World Trivial Statistical Info etc

[Timosity]

OK, I'm fascinated by statistics, so I've compiled some off various sites to see if it can spark any trivial sort of responses from the data gathered. Try to steer away from anything political.

Just to start off with some population data

World 6.4531903 billion

China 1.34 billion
India 1.09 billion
United States of America  294.54 million
Indonesia  221.78 million
Brazil  183.2 million
Pakistan  157 million
Russia  146.74 million
Japan  127.94 million
Germany 82.63 million
France 59.5 million
United Kingdom 59.16 million
Italy 56 million
South Africa 47.56 million
Spain 41.9 million
Poland 38 million
Argentina 37 million
Canada 32 million
Australia 20.23 million
Netherlands 16.36 million
Greece 11.2 million
Portugal 10.4 million
Belgium 10.37 million
Sweden 9 million
Bulgaria 7.9 million
Switzerland 7.43 million
Israel 6.7 million
Denmark 5.41 million
Finland 5.22 million
Norway 4.58 million
Ireland 4.02 million
New Zealand 3.81 million

This population data was gathered from http://www.world-gazetteer.com/home.htm which is fairly up to date (2004)

Largest countries by size

Russia 17,075,400 sq km, (6,592,846 sq miles)
Canada 9,330,970 sq km, (3,602,707 sq miles)
China 9,326,410 sq km, (3,600,947 sq miles)
United States 9.166,600 sq km, (3,539,242 sq miles)
Brazil 8,456,510 sq km, (3,265,075 sq miles)
Australia 7,617,930 sq km, (2,941,283 sq miles)
India 2,973,190 sq km, (1,147,949 sq miles)
Argentina 2,736,690 sq km, (1,056,636 sq miles)
Kazakhstan 2,717,300 sq km, (1,049,150 sq miles)
Sudan 2,376,000 sq km, (917,374 sq miles)


Most people think that Australia is just some little country down under somewhere, population wise they are right, but as far as size goes you'd be surprised.

here are some comparisons that I found:

Australia trying to fit in Asia, well it could fit quite easily.



Europe and Australia are fairly similar in size



The main 48 states of the USA is fairly similar aswell



The USA would actually fit into Africa over 3 times (the pic is not really to scale) and the Asian continent is larger than Africa



This picture is a good indicator of where mass populations of people live, although I think the richer countries have more electricity

for a larger version: http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/wrldnightlightslrg.jpg

Notice that most of the population of Australia live in 3 cities on the lower half of the east coast, most of the continent is desert or deserted. (and also a lot is owned by Aboriginal people, how nice of us to give them this land for free) [sarcasm]

The population of the city of Sydney is 4.3 million which is slightly more than L.A. 3.9 million which would make it the second largest city in the USA behind New York City 8.13 million [note this doesn't include surrounding areas]

There are different ways used to calculate the largest cities in the world, eg. adding the populations of cities with other surrounding areas and cities.

EG. I found that sometimes Seoul Korea was the largest city (I think by not including surrounding area)

Sometimes Tokyo Japan was (I think that included surrounding areas) and in that same way New York was 2nd with about 30 million [this includes the New York-Philadelphia area]

Also Mumbai (Bombay), India, was listed as the most populated city (I think this was the most up to date site, In this list Karâchi, Pakistan came in 4th, Tokyo 16th, New York 17th, London 20th, Beijing 24th, Toronto 30th & Sydney 36th


Hong Kong is the most densely populated city in the world.

Stats can be silly things sometimes cause you can just work out a way to get the stats you want. You can also get the world record for any obscure thing you can think of that noone else would even think about, eg. a lot of the things in the Guinness Book of Records.

I'm probably just boring everyone, your lucky I'm not talking about Cricket, in which Australia just won a best of 3 finals series against India 2-0. Last night they beat them by 208 runs which is one of the largest wins in history and probably against the 2nd best team (it was sad really cause most of the other games were really close) that's One Day cricket, the 4 test 5day match series was tied 1 all.

[Nacho]

I really enjoyed the reading timosity, thanks for the info...  

[Andail]

I'm pretty fond of this kind of statistics as well, and have this questionable ability to memorize all sorts of unnecessary demographical facts and figures.

For instance; if you gathered all dwarves in the world, they could fit into an ordinary garden shed, and it would be visible from the moon.

Also, what the second man in space thought was
fireflies, turned out to be just flakes of frost.

It all makes sense, in a way.

[AGA]

The smallest city in the world is Saint David's, in Wales (unless it's changed recently). Fascinating fact for you there...

[Nine Toes]

I like trivia.... lemme see if I can hunt something down....

[Barcik]

The smallest city in the world is Saint David's, in Wales (unless it's changed recently). Fascinating fact for you there...

As well as the town with the longest name! The great
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. AGA can pronounce it, really!



Those crazy Welsh.

[Nacho]

Eeer... curious, but billion is Spanish means a million of milions (1,000,000,000,000) and not 1,000 millions (1,000,000,000).

I think that it is related with the old spanish coin, the "peseta" wich had a pretty "small" value... So, when we talked of great machroeconomics figures we talked about millions of pesetas. (1,000,000,000,000)

Now there´s a mess... A "spanish" billion of Euros is a Huuuuuuge number, and we will probably start to mean 1,000,000,000 when we talk of "billions"...

Curious how economy also is related with languaje.

It has divided the spanish bilion by 1,000...

[Privateer Puddin']

Yeh, different versions of 'billion' :| think the blame goes to the USA for that ?

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

Yeh the British billion is a million million, but personally I prefer the American billion- one thousand million.

[AGA]

As well as the town with the longest name! The great
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. AGA can pronounce it, really!

Listen (198KB)

[Barcik]

Crazy, I told you!

[Nacho]

I was not "blaming" nobody for the billion issue... just to make it clear... ^_^

[Goldmund]

That's nothing.

I've read that the scientists have calculated that if you took all chairs in the world and build a tower with them, so that one chair stands on another one etc., the resulting tower would be amazingly high!

[Squinky]

Amazing and educational too.

[Gilbert]

Amazing, but don't fall into the trap of the all evil statistics, statistics are all lies.

[TheYak]

And 95% of all statistics are wildly inaccurate, as well.

On another note, AGA sounds like a dwarf himself.

Stats interest me as well, probably why I like semi-complex RPG's.  One thing few people seem to realise is that San Francisco, while being one of the most famous cities in the world, is under 800,000 in population (not counting areas surrounding the borders).  However, its population jumps up to 3.2 million if you count all the people that work there. It's those 2.4 million other bastards that make driving to work so much fun. (Note: Corrected stupid math mistake. Jackhammer caught it, and a decimal place shall lead them. You'd be surprised how many statistics are given that have made a decimal mistake. (32.5% 3.25% in fact))

[shbaz]

...under 800,000 in population (not counting areas surrounding the borders).  However, its population jumps up to 3.2 million if you count all the people that work there. It's those 3.12 million other bastards that make driving to work so much fun.

2.4 million other bastards. (95% of statistics are wildly inaccurate  )

[Las Naranjas]

It's also one of only two cities in the world of it's type, on a massive harbour formed in a similar fashion to a fjord, but without the glacier.

They also both have big, fat and famous bridges in them.


I think it's funny that on the light map, the Dot that is Sydney also encompasses the Central Coast, the Hunter Valley and the Illawarra. The CSIRO says that they will all be one city by the middle of the century [although it'd be difficult, not to say a travesty, to build over the Hawkesbury sandstone], but as far as Aliens and really really tall people are concerned, they might as well already be one.

Other noticible things. South Korea is a very bright rectangle of light. North Korea is the opposite in equal magnitude.

Although there are glimmers in Cairo, Algeria/Tunisia and in the gulf of Guinea, they really pale before the bright Pretorian star in the south [which also includes Joburg] and it's companion Cape Town.

Lets call it an Apartheid of light

[Timosity]

I uploaded the larger version of the lights map of the world to make it clearer, It's well worth a look.

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/wrldnightlightslrg.jpg

Melbourne has the 3rd largest Greek-speaking population in the world, It seems odd that this would occur outside Greece. Although there'd be far more Irish that live outside Ireland, probably in many countries, that speak Irish (even non Irish people speak Irish after a few drinks).

Although there are more Italian & Vietnamese-speaking people, well that is behind English-speaking too.

I'm sure a lot would call themselves Australian these days (like Mark Philippoussis [Residence: Cardiff by the Sea, CA, USA] proud Melbourne boy, tries to hide his slight yank accent) Population 3.66 million, population of Greeks, a lot.


It's amazing how bright Japan is, as well as being a wealthy country, they love thier bright lights and technology.

It's amazing how much light there is in India, I know the population is huge, but I didn't expect the whole country to be covered.

And I expected more lights in Africa for such a populated continent, there are pleanty where Las mentioned, but I guess a lot of the countries are fairly poor and getting food and water is more important than neon lights.
Also I'm sure there is pleanty of deserted land where the wilderbeast roam free (and get caught in fencing)

From that picture you can tell why you can't see many stars in the sky at night in the city compared to going into the country. Well in Europe, Eastern half of North America, Japan, China & India it would be hard to find a dark place.

No wonder that song 'I wear my sunglasses at night' was popular

I wonder how much electricity is wasted for no reason at night, wonder what sort of impact this has on our environment, wonder when solar/wind/hydro energy will be used instead of coal & Uranium. (more commonly)

[AGA]

Cardiff by the Sea? Sort of like the real Cardiff then...