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!
#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.
Image source: patentspatented, Ömürden Cengiz
#2
One million seconds is less than 11 days.
One billion seconds is more than 31 years.
Image source: clumaho, Nick Hillier
#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.
Image source: Mustard_Sauc, openDemocracy
#4
If the oldest living person is 115 years old, then 116 years ago there was a totally different set of humans on earth.
Image source: icudbNE1, Brian Fegter
#5
95% of the ocean and 99% of the oceans floor remains unexplored
Image source: vogdswagon26, Shaun Low
#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.
Image source: anon, Nate Johnston
#7
90%+ of congress members are multi-millionaires
Image source: jedledbetter, Quick PS
#8
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
Image source: anon, Duncan Kidd
#9
4/3 of americans don’t know fractions.
Image source: cronedog, Jorge Franganillo
#10
8% of people pronounce Wi-Fi as wiffy…8%. I don’t know who you are, but I will find you…
Image source: ssmahony, Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk
#11
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.
Image source: bruceki, Conor Samuel
#12
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!
Image source: Andromeda321, David Menidrey
#13
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
Image source: anon, freestocks
#14
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.
Image source: servo1025, Dan Meyers
#15
Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the building of the great pyramids.
Image source: AskRedditAndChewGum, Osama Elsayed
#16
Someone in the world [passes away] of starvation or malnutrition every three seconds.
Image source: GenJonesMom, Felton Davis
#17
If you picked a random Swede and a random Canadian, the Swede would be more likely to speak English than the Canadian.
Image source: Slavaa, Toa Heftiba
#18
There is a fence in Australia that stretches the equivalent distance of London to New York.
Image source: zangor, en.wikipedia.org
#19
40% of Americans cannot afford a $400 USD emergency.
Image source: anon, Jonnica Hill
#20
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.
Image source: winowmak3r, NASA
#21
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.
Image source: lostdrunkpuppy, Kunal Mukherjee
#22
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.
Image source: anotherpoweruser, Jakob Owens
#23
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.
Image source: MarsNirgal, Jeremy Bezanger
#24
That sharks have been on this earth for some 450 million years. 450 Million Fucking Years!
Image source: mecha_tako, Jakob Owens
#25
“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/
Image source: Weswieeee, Yukon Haughton
#26
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.**
Image source: southernmayd, Keith Cooper
#27
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…
Image source: anon, Poker Photos
#28
90% of people live in the northern hemisphere
Image source: username-alrdy-takn, Greg Rosenke
#29
The bible is the most shoplifted book in history.
Image source: mhaydar, Ugur Akdemir
#30
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.
Image source: MarsNirgal, Bryan Goff
#31
So far, 46 people have [passed away] by lawn mowers in the U.S. this year. 46.
Image source: Corrupt_Files, Carnaby Gilany
#32
More [lives are taken away] by vending machines than by sharks.
Image source: ObscureKitten, Per-Olof Forsberg
#33
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.
Image source: FencingFemmeFatale, Anna Shvets
#34
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.
Image source: angelicomens, Drahomír Posteby-Mach
#35
The average number of legs, for humans, is less than 2.
Image source: cronedog, Rob Wilson
#36
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.
Image source: Leigh-ann, Jakob Pfalz
#37
In the year 8000 B.C. there were 5 million humans on Earth.
Image source: bukanir, Bob Brewer
#38
Greater Tokyo has a larger population than Canada.
Image source: Logic_Nuke, Joseph Chan
#39
The existence of the T-Rex is closer in time to today than it is to the existence of the Stegosaurus.
Image source: Fats33, Adam Mathieu
#40
90% of Native Americans were wiped out due to diesease
Image source: Ronin_777, National Cancer Institute
#41
92% of Downs Syndrome foetus’ are aborted once detected by screening (in Europe).
Image source: ian9167, Stephen Andrews
#42
F1 drivers lose around 5kg of weight every race.
Image source: auditore01
#43
The population of the world has doubled since the mid 70’s.
Image source: IntrepidC, Ishan @seefromthesky
#44
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/
Image source: probablynotdrunk, Ryoji Iwata
#45
The battle of Stalingrad alone claimed significantly more lives than all the US servicemen killed in our nation’s entire history.
Image source: Hairless_Talking_Ape, Anton Darius
#46
The Vatican has 2.3 popes per square mile.
Image source: Sasquatch430, Simone Savoldi
#47
1 in 4 people in the UK suffer from a mental health issue.
Image source: thevegandad, Joshua Fuller
#48
Among a random group of 23 people, theres a 50% chance two of them share the same birthday
Image source: motherofcatss, Caterina Berger
#49
There are more prisons than colleges in the US.
Image source: JZ_the_ICON, Tyler Rutherford
#50
Ants have a larger biomass than humans.
Image source: Turtley13, Maksim Shutov
Follow Us
