Tag Archives: neat stats

Only four nations have populations that coincide with their rankings in square miles: Brazil, Ireland, Yemen, and the United States. These “what if” maps have become quite the meme of late. (Source)

All the George Rekers buzz pushed this here website thingy into Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs this week, a place mostly populated by group blogs like the Huffington Post. I’m way down at #88, but that’s still totally braggable. Interestingly, I’m the only blog with a Google domain on the list, but since those busy-busy-busy anti-gay hackers would have to bring …

This here website thingy gained a (relative) ton of readers from India in the last few months. One year ago, India wasn’t even in my international top ten. Desis in the house, raise your hands!

After Avatar became the highest grossing movie of all time earlier this week, many of you noted that because of inflation, gross revenue and ticket sales are two different measures of success. The Live Feed notes today that in terms of attendance, Avatar is actually the 26th most successful film of all time. Here’s the top 20, by tickets sold. …

Gothamist tips us to this neat map showing how the population density of Manhattan changes by day and night. I think that giant spike above midtown is the Bloomingdale’s shopping area.

Stats guru Nate Silver has done his usual brilliant number crunching and made estimates on how long it will take each state to reaching the tipping point at which ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage would fail. Go to the above link for Silver’s explanations of how he reached his conclusions. Below is a map/timeline made by a Silver fan, …

Barack Obama is our eighth left-handed president. Oddly, four of the last five presidents have been lefties. James Garfield, 1881Herbert Hoover, 1929 – 1933Harry Truman, 1945 – 1953Gerald Ford, 1974 – 1977Ronald Reagan, 1981 – 1989George Bush, 1989 – 1993Bill Clinton, 1993 – 2001Barack Obama, 2009 Via Wikipedia: In his book Right-Hand, Left-Hand, Chris McManus of University College London argues …

StrangeMaps tips us to this 1983 graphic from the Dallas Morning News which shows the relative size and populations of some major cities. Obviously, the populations have increased for some of these cities, but like the StrangeMaps dude, I’m more fascinated by their relative sizes and densities. What remains striking about this map, even though we’re talking about populations and …

Here are the boroughs of NYC as represented by the states which are closest in population. According to the 2000 US census: Bronx-1.332 million; Brooklyn-2.465 million; Manhattan-1.537 million; Queens-2.229 million; and Staten Island 443,728. I freekin’ love maps like this. (Via – Gothamist)

A new analysis of the last U.S. census reveals that for the first time, two Hispanic surnames are among the ten most common last names in the country. I can’t embed it here, but in the linked story there’s a neat scrollable graphic of the 5000 most common last names. The new top ten: 1. Smith2. Johnson3. Williams4. Brown5. Jones6. …