31 May 2010

May 29 Numbers

I love those lists of numbers and the FT Mag does a lovely little 'Week in Numbers' that enlivened my morning coffee:

  • In the past seven days, about 2.6m babies have been born around the world.

  • Roughly twice as many computers have been sold in the same period and at least four times as many mobile phones.

  • For every baby born, the world churned out nearly 40 tonnes of food

  • Births outnumber deaths by just over two to one.

  • Worldwide, more than a million deaths occur every week, a rate only slightly higher than the nearly 1m cars produced weekly and greater than the estimated number of abortions (900,000 a week).

  • Moan about the spam or the e-mails we receive, but they represent only a minuscule fraction of the 1,000bn sent in the past week.

  • Roughly 20 e-mails are sent every day for every person in the world, which equates to a much higher average per user, given that most of the global population is still not connected.

  • Google searches are much rarer than e-mails – just 10bn or so in the past week.

  • More shocking are the number of cigarettes smoked (five for every Google search) and the number of dollars spent on illegal drugs – nearly one for every search.
  • Source: Worldometer

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