Statistics can be both surprising and confusing. They help us to frame the world around us in a way that we can understand, and help us to make important decisions.
They can also be incredibly interesting, revealing abstract truths about ourselves and our world that would be difficult to grasp without the help of statistics.
Reddit user u/throwdowntown69 asked:
"What's a statistic that blew your mind?"
Canada
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More than 50% of all of Canada lives below this little red line. Which is why our population distribution is so wonky.
Hockey
If you take away all of Wayne Gretzky's hockey goals, he's still the league's all-time points leader solely on assists.
A billion
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Seen on r/todayilearned the other day:
The USA has the 3rd highest population in the world. If it had a billion more people, it would still have the 3rd highest population in the world.
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The higher the better
Cats who fall from less than six stories, and are still alive, have greater injuries than cats who fall from higher than six stories.
Feline High-Rise syndrome and such. Higher up, they have enough time to reach terminal velocity and relax their bodies because they don't feel like they're falling, so they don't hit the ground fully braced. The shorter distance falling doesn't allow for this, and results in greater injuries to the cat.
We know...
It costs the government less money to build and give people houses/places to live than it would be to have them be homeless. Mostly due to the increase burden homeless people have on the health care and justice systems.
Just saying
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God I wish more people understood this. If housing and healthcare were made more affordable by public means it would be WAY less expensive for everyone.
The Beatles
The Beatles were only together for 7 years...all those hits and fame from only 7 years. It's bizarre.
Cards
There is almost no chance that the same exact combination has been achieved twice in a completely shuffled deck of cards.
To put it in perspective, there are more combinations to shuffle 52 cards than there are atoms on this planet.
Dinosaurs
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Dinosaurs ruled the earth for so long that TRex was much closer to seeing Justin Bieber in concert than it was to seeing a stegosaurus.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter