Sunday 17 November 2013

"There are more people living in this circle than outside it"

The Daily Mail published a load of fascinating maps this week.

My favourite was this one:

Included in the article is another map showing the average age at which people say (whether they are telling the truth or not) they first have sex; the average age is far higher in exactly that very populous region. Cause, effect, who knows?

Musing #2, the Philippines typhoon was a tragedy and 10,000 people died. Using the figures from here, about 6,000 babies are born every day in the Philippines.

Musing #3, a far worse natural town planning disaster was the Boxing Day tsunami which killed/drowned about 200,000 people in Indonesia. According to the UN, about 12,000 babies are born every day in Indonesia, which means that the population would have replenished itself within two or three weeks.

4 comments:

Antisthenes said...

Not like you to give misleading information from statistics that is usually the preserve of politicians, journalists and vested interest groups(you know the Labour party, BBC and Guardian and eco-loons just to name some of the worst). You failed to take into account deaths from other causes so your replenishment times will not be accurate.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anti, yes, in those countries there is 1 death for every 2 births, so those replenishment times would have to be doubled to arrive at the truer picture.

I would have thought this to be blindingly obvious but my point stands. The population of Indonesia a year after the Tsunami was much larger than one day before it.

James Higham said...

Not an area I particularly fancy moving to.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, me neither, but there are clearly four billion others who can put up with it.