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We all know that statistics can be manipulated and applied in different ways and should always be taken with a grain of salt, right?
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, can we also talk about how they can be super fun?
You’ll definitely have no choice but to agree after you check out these 18 pretty crazy stats.
18. A little perspective.
If you were to compress earth’s existence into a 24 hour day, life would first appear at 4am, plants would first appear at 10pm, dinosaurs from about 11pm-11:40pm, and humans emerge at 11:59pm.
From Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”
17. You can’t drink it, though.
There is more actual lemon in Lemon Pledge cleaner than there is in Country Time lemonade.
16. I honestly thought it would be higher.
you are 5x more likely to get struck by lightning than be 7ft tall
7 footers have a 17% chance of playing in the NBA. It must suck for the 83% who deal with the pitfalls of being 7 feet tall (can’t fit in cars/planes, hitting head, need tall ceilings, drastically reduced life expectancy) but don’t get that sweet sweet NBA money.
15. A sad state of affairs.
The top 10% of drinkers account 60% of all alcohol consumed in the US. And they drink the equivalent of 74 drinks per week.
So the entire alcoholic beverages industry is kept alive by severe alcoholics.
14. Wait, what?
Sharks predate trees by 100 million years…
Sharks also predate Saturn’s rings.
13. That honestly seems low.
According to the FBI, there are currently more than 25 active serial killers in the US.
Which is WAY less than the rate in the 70s.
12. Kill them all.
But coconuts tree are still more dangerous than sharks, especially in NYC
11. Crazy, right?
From 1970 to 2000ish, US median household income and home prices were on an almost perfect straight line (r=0.997 and r=0.987 respectively).
Using the regression line (y=ax+b), the predicted median income in 2021 was 75k and the median home price was 194k. Actual median income is 67k and median home price is 330k.
10. Try not to panic.
Statistics show that men have about a one in two chance of developing cancer during their lifetime, while women have a one in three chance.
But don’t panic. Most of that is Prostate Cancer or Breast Cancer.
Which we are really good at curing, providing it’s caught early enough.
People talk about a ‘cure for cancer’. But we cure cancer all the time. We have for ages. What we can’t do is be much help once it metastases into the lymphatic system. Rare cancers. Cancers like lung cancer which don’t display symptoms till the later stages. Those are the real bastards. Colon cancer is vicious.
But Prostate and Breast Cancer? Thats an oncologists staple. Your hospital will go through dozens of them a month and half of those cases won’t even involve chemo.
Get regular screening, if you are over 40. And if you’re obese, do what you can to lose it. And even if you do get a diagnosis the odds of an unfavourable outcome are rather low. If it’s caught early.
If you’ve been putting off a screening, go. And get it redone regular. Cancer doesn’t mean terminal. Not even close.
9. That second one is pretty cringe.
Human life expectancy has increased more rapidly in the past 50 years than in the past 200,000 years.
The average drunk driver has likely drove under the influence 80 times before arrest.
8. Among other things.
I read somewhere that if you were to jump off an average office desk while on a neutron star you’d be travelling around half the speed of light by the time you hit the ground.
That’s going to mess your knees up I reckon.
7. This shouldn’t be true.
40% of homeless are employed.
I was one of those people. Full time job, part time job, full time college student…. homeless. It was a rough time.
I slept in my car or friends dorms occasionally. I mostly stayed on campus or at work when it wasn’t bed time. Bed time I’d go to state parks or a Walmart parking lot and sleep there. I had an Aztec so I just took the back seats out and the back end was “home”. I used my school’s athletic facility to shower and take care of personal needs.
Food wise it really varied. I could afford food, (just not rent because of school/fuel/bills and such) I just didn’t have anywhere to keep it. So I’d grocery shop daily or buy stuff that didn’t need refrigerated. Dollar menus at fast food restaurants were nice, hot, and cheap food. I was also lucky that at my school most students had more meals than they would eat on their meal plans. So I had quite a few friends that would just use one of their meals for me. It was a use it or lose it situation and a few friends knew my situation and shared with me.
The worst part of it was the isolation. Never having somewhere to be at home other than your car. I tried to make up for it by basically never being in my car besides travel or sleep, but it sucked.
Life improved though and I was able to afford an apartment eventually.
6. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
One third of adults still sleep with a comfort object.
I’ve got my teddy bear my daughter made me at build a bear after her mom (my wife) passed away. I snuggle with that bear every night and will continue doing so with no end in sight.
5. They are middle aged.
“44% of older Millennials already have a chronic health condition.”
Millennials aren’t young anymore. We have back pain. And debt.
4. The world trying to fix itself.
Sperm count of men is decreasing by 1% every year and it is decreased by 58% since 1973.
The average college aged male has a sperm count 1/3 of their father. We are still trying to figure out why, but plastics have been investigated.
3. Too much sun.
2 in 3 Australians will be diagnosed with a skin cancer by the time they’re 70.
Actually, Google search actually says (multiple times) that “at least 2 in 3 will be diagnosed with skin cancer by 70”
Eff.
2. That’s a lot.
Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, and there are about 2 Trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
And still more permutations to a deck of cards than all those stars
1. If only we could use it.
More energy from the sun hits Earth every hour than the planet uses in a year.
More energy is produced by the sun in one second than has been used by all humans since humans have existed.
I’m definitely not sorry that I read these, are you?
Share your own favorite crazy statistic with us in the comments!
