crunchpatty
Old Shoe
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Oct-18-2007 00:40
And they say statistics are meaningless :)
For those not familiar, Harper's Magazine publishes a list of funny, political statistics every month. As the proud blushing owner of a (lapsed but renewed) one-year subscription, I hereby pledge to post them every time I get a new one in the mail.
Sources for these references are available from the magazine. Check it out:
Number of different areas of US infrastructure graded by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2005: 15
Average grade and highest grade, respectively, that the group gave out: D, C+
Amount that poor roads cost Americans in repairs and other extra operating costs each year: $67 000 000 000
Estimated amount needed over the next twenty years to maintain US sewer systems: $390 000 000 000
Percentage change since 1990 in the average size of an American master bathroom: +50
Percentage change since 1980 in the average amount of solid waste generated by an American: +24
Number of square feet of US self-storage space built since 1998: 1 000 000 000
Number of US colleges that have closed since 1990: 228
Number of the 17 Islamic universities in sub-Saharan Africa that have been founded in the past 10 years: 10
Age at which most German children are slotted into high schools: 10
Chance that a child of immigrants to Germany is granted a spot at a college preparatory high school: 1 in 7
Chance for all German children: 1 in 3
Percentage change since 2004 in US immigration to Canada: +46
Percentage change since then in total retail sales in Crawford, Texas: -27
Percentage disapproval rating for George W. Bush in July: 66
Ratings for Harry Truman in 1952 and Richard Nixon in 1974, respectively, the only presidents ever to climb so high: 67, 66
Chance that a CEO who left one of the top 2500 global companies in 1995 was forced out: 1 in 8
Chance in 2006: 1 in 3
(more, ahead)
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crunchpatty
Old Shoe
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Oct-18-2007 01:07
Number of kernels of corn it takes to make the corn syrup used in one kernel: 8:1l of candy corn: 3
Ratio of the number of calories in a candy-corn kernel to the number in a real corn kernel: 8:1
Figures are current as of August 2007.
Fun with numbers, huh? I paid for my subscription, but like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I'm happy to give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now. And there ain't no fleas on my Keidis, neither :)
Discuss.
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