Statistics Saturday: Country Populations Versus What I Thought

I confess I’ve gotten a little away from the important business of these statistical reports, that of listing countries of the world. Let me return to that, then, with a brief chart describing the countries of the world and how their population compares to what I thought.

Country	Population	How That Compares To What I’d Have Guessed
China	1,363,800,000	About Right
India	1,242,620,000	About Right
United States	317,842,000	About Right
Indonesia	247,424,598	About Right
Brazil	201,032,714	Higher
Pakistan	186,134,000	Higher
Nigeria	173,615,000	Higher
Bangladesh	152,518,015	Higher
Russia	146,019,512	Higher
Japan	127,120,000	Lower
Mexico	119,713,203	Higher
Philippines	99,392,700	Higher
Vietnam	89,708,900	Higher
Ethiopia	86,613,986	Higher
Egypt	86,261,500	Higher
Germany	80,716,000	Higher
Iran	77,347,000	Higher
Turkey	76,667,864	Higher
Democratic Republic of the Congo	67,514,000	Higher
Thailand	65,926,261	Higher
France	65,864,000	Lower
United Kingdom	63,705,000	Lower
Italy	60,021,955	Lower
Burma	53,259,000	About Right
South Africa	52,981,991	Higher
South Korea	50,219,669	About Right
Colombia	47,540,000	Higher
Spain	46,609,700	Lower
Ukraine	45,410,071	Higher
Tanzania	44,928,923	Higher
Kenya	44,354,000	Higher
Argentina	40,117,096	Higher
Algeria	38,700,000	Higher
Poland	38,502,396	Higher
Sudan	37,964,000	Higher
Uganda	35,357,000	Higher
Canada	35,344,962	About Right
Iraq	34,035,000	About Right
Morocco	33,225,600	Higher
Peru	30,475,144	Higher
Uzbekistan	30,183,400	Higher
Malaysia	30,071,000	About Right
Saudi Arabia	29,994,272	Higher
Venezuela	28,946,101	About Right
Nepal	26,494,504	Higher
Afghanistan	25,500,100	About Right
Yemen	25,235,000	Higher
North Korea	24,895,000	About Right
Ghana	24,658,823	Higher
Mozambique	23,700,715	Higher
Australia	23,446,084	About Right
Taiwan	23,379,129	Higher
Ivory Coast	23,202,000	Higher
Syria	21,898,000	Higher
Madagascar	21,263,403	Higher
Angola	20,609,294	Higher
Cameroon	20,386,799	Higher
Sri Lanka	20,277,597	About Right
Romania	20,121,641	About Right
Burkina Faso	17,322,796	Higher
Kazakhstan	17,207,000	Higher
Niger	17,129,076	About Right
Netherlands	16,845,600	Lower
Malawi	16,363,000	About Right
Chile	16,341,929	Lower
Guatemala	15,806,675	About Right
Ecuador	15,715,900	Lower
Mali	15,302,000	About Right
Cambodia	15,135,000	Lower
Zambia	14,580,290	Lower
Zimbabwe	12,973,808	Lower
Senegal	12,873,601	About Right
Chad	12,825,000	Lower
South Sudan	11,296,000	About Right
Belgium	11,188,935	Lower
Cuba	11,167,325	Lower
Tunisia	10,886,500	About Right
Guinea	10,824,200	About Right
Greece	10,815,197	Lower
Rwanda	10,537,222	Lower
Czech Republic	10,512,400	Lower
Somalia	10,496,000	About Right
Portugal	10,477,800	Lower
Haiti	10,413,211	About Right
Benin	10,323,000	Higher
Bolivia	10,027,254	Lower
Hungary	9,879,000	Lower
Sweden	9,658,301	Lower
Azerbaijan	9,477,100	About Right
Belarus	9,468,100	Higher
Dominican Republic	9,445,281	Lower
Burundi	9,420,248	About Right
Honduras	8,555,072	Lower
Austria	8,504,850	Lower
United Arab Emirates	8,264,070	Lower
Tajikistan	8,160,000	Higher
Israel	8,157,300	About Right
Switzerland	8,112,200	Lower
Papua New Guinea	7,398,500	About Right
Bulgaria	7,282,041	Lower
Hong Kong (China)	7,219,700	Higher
Serbia	7,181,505	About Right
Paraguay	6,783,374	Lower
Laos	6,580,800	About Right
Jordan	6,568,100	Lower
El Salvador	6,340,000	Lower
Eritrea	6,333,000	Lower
Libya	6,202,000	Lower
Togo	6,191,155	About Right
Sierra Leone	6,190,280	About Right
Nicaragua	6,071,045	Lower
Kyrgyzstan	5,663,133	About Right
Denmark	5,627,235	Lower
Finland	5,453,784	Lower
Slovakia	5,415,949	Lower
Singapore	5,399,200	About Right
Turkmenistan	5,240,000	Lower
Norway	5,109,056	Lower
Lebanon	4,822,000	Lower
Costa Rica	4,667,096	Lower
Central African Republic	4,616,000	Lower
Ireland	4,593,100	Lower
New Zealand	4,522,810	About Right
Georgia	4,483,800	Lower
Republic of the Congo	4,448,000	Lower
Palestine	4,420,549	About Right
Liberia	4,294,000	About Right
Croatia	4,290,612	Lower
Oman	3,992,000	About Right
Bosnia and Herzegovina	3,791,622	About Right
Puerto Rico (USA)	3,615,086	About Right
Moldova	4,062,800	Lower
Mauritania	3,461,041	About Right
Panama	3,405,813	Lower
Uruguay	3,286,314	Lower
Kuwait	3,065,850	Lower
Armenia	3,017,400	Lower
Lithuania	2,941,953	About Right
Mongolia	2,931,300	Lower
Albania	2,821,977	About Right
Jamaica	2,711,476	Higher
Qatar	2,116,400	About Right
Namibia	2,113,077	Lower
Lesotho	2,074,000	About Right
Macedonia	2,062,294	About Right
Slovenia	2,062,227	About Right
Botswana	2,024,904	Lower
Latvia	2,003,900	About Right
Gambia	1,882,450	Lower
Kosovo	1,815,606	Lower
Guinea-Bissau	1,704,000	Lower
Gabon	1,672,000	Lower
Equatorial Guinea	1,622,000	About Right
Trinidad and Tobago	1,328,019	About Right
Estonia	1,311,870	Lower
Mauritius	1,257,900	About Right
Swaziland	1,250,000	About Right
Bahrain	1,234,571	About Right
Timor-Leste	1,066,409	Higher
Djibouti	873,000	About Right
Cyprus	865,878	About Right
Fiji	858,038	Higher
Réunion (France)	840,974	Higher
Guyana	784,894	Higher
Bhutan	746,060	Higher
Comoros	743,798	Higher
Montenegro	620,029	Higher
Macau (China)	607,500	Lower
Solomon Islands	581,344	Lower
Western Sahara	567,000	Lower
Luxembourg	537,000	Lower
Suriname	534,189	About Right
Cape Verde	491,875	About Right
Malta	416,055	About Right
Guadeloupe (France)	405,739	Lower
Brunei	393,162	Lower
Martinique (France)	392,291	About Right
Bahamas	351,461	About Right
Belize	349,728	Lower
Iceland	325,671	Lower
Maldives	317,280	About Right
Barbados	285,000	Lower
French Polynesia (France)	268,270	About Right
Vanuatu	264,652	About Right
New Caledonia (France)	258,958	Higher
French Guiana (France)	237,549	Higher
Mayotte (France)	212,645	About Right
Samoa	187,820	Lower
São Tomé and Príncipe	187,356	Lower
Saint Lucia	180,000	Lower
Guam (USA)	159,358	Lower
Curaçao (Netherlands)	150,563	Lower
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	109,000	Lower
Kiribati	106,461	About Right
United States Virgin Islands (USA)	106,405	Lower
Grenada	103,328	Lower
Tonga	103,036	About Right
Aruba (Netherlands)	101,484	About Right
Federated States of Micronesia	101,351	About Right
Jersey (UK)	99,000	Lower
Seychelles	90,945	Lower
Antigua and Barbuda	86,295	Lower
Isle of Man (UK)	84,497	Lower
Andorra	76,098	Lower
Dominica	71,293	Lower
Bermuda (UK)	64,237	Lower
Guernsey (UK)	63,085	Lower
Greenland (Denmark)	56,483	Lower
Marshall Islands	56,086	About Right
American Samoa (USA)	55,519	About Right
Cayman Islands (UK)	55,456	About Right
Saint Kitts and Nevis	54,000	About Right
Northern Mariana Islands (USA)	53,883	About Right
Faroe Islands (Denmark)	48,308	About Right
Sint Maarten (Netherlands)	37,429	About Right
Liechtenstein	37,132	Lower
Saint Martin (France)	36,979	Lower
Monaco	36,136	About Right
San Marino	33,549	About Right
Turks and Caicos Islands (UK)	31,458	Lower
Gibraltar (UK)	30,001	Lower
British Virgin Islands (UK)	29,537	Lower
Åland Islands (Finland)	28,502	Lower
Caribbean Netherlands (Netherlands)	23,296	Lower
Palau	20,901	Lower
Cook Islands (NZ)	14,974	Lower
Anguilla (UK)	13,452	Lower
Wallis and Futuna (France)	13,135	Lower
Tuvalu	11,323	Lower
Nauru	9,945	Lower
Saint Barthélemy (France)	8,938	Lower
Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France)	6,081	Lower
Montserrat (UK)	4,922	Lower
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (UK)	4,000	About Right
Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Norway)	2,655	Lower
Falkland Islands (UK)	2,563	About Right
Norfolk Island (Australia)	2,302	Lower
Christmas Island (Australia)	2,072	Lower
Niue (NZ)	1,613	Lower
Tokelau (NZ)	1,411	Lower
Vatican City	839	Higher
Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Australia)	596	Lower
Pitcairn Islands (UK)	56	About Right

In conclusion: there are a lot of countries in the world and I somehow had preconceptions about the size of the populations of New Caledonia, Gambia, and Benin, which I only hope hasn’t caused me to make improper policy decisions.

What My Humor Blog Did In February 2014

I do make a serious effort to track what’s being read and what isn’t around these parts, and for February 2014, it turns out the number of readers of pages around here went from 337 in January to 337 in February. At least they were different readers. Actually, the number of readers increased from 153 to 170, implying a page-per-reader count drop from 2.20 to 1.98, so I’m amusing more people, but they’re all a little less happy with what they see.

The most popular articles the last thirty days were:

1. Mathematics Comics, Over That Way, pointing over to my mildly popular mathematics blog.
2. Statistics Saturday: Hi, Dad, which gets you to a better understanding of my father.
3. Unintentional Laughs, where I just make fun of Mary Worth and Flash Gordon like they needed me to do that.
4. Another View of the United States, offering the fascinating statistical matchup between states of the United States and nations of the world.
5. Newton’s Prank, about this time he made a fake comet, and which I realize has a thematic link to Also, Heidegger Was A Shingle Weaver, and the unexpected sides of historically important people.

As usual the countries sending me the most readers were the United States (261) and Canada (28), with the United Kingdom (8) and Singapore (6) coming up next. The countries that could just barely tolerate me were Denmark, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, and Sweden. None of them were on last month’s roster, just as last month none of the countries were from December 2013’s roster of single-viewer nations, so my plan to amuse one person in every country in the world is continuing to exist.

Another View Of The United States

Based on the graphics I see passed around the friends of my Twitter feed, it’s really popular to make maps that equate states of the United States (America) to nations of the world, in terms of population, or gross domestic product, or area, or what have you. And since lists of statistics are unmistakably the most popular thing I write around here, let me get in on the action. For your convenience, here’s a list of the fifty certified United States matched up with one of the world’s nations that has just as many letters in the name.

United State	Matches Nation
Alabama	Uruguay
Alaska	Belize
Arizona	Burundi
Arkansas	Kiribati
California	Kyrgyzstan
Colorado	Malaysia
Connecticut	Cook Islands
Delaware	Dominica
Florida	Lebanon
Georgia	Georgia
Hawaii	Latvia
Idaho	Japan
Illinois	Mongolia
Indiana	Romania
Iowa	Peru
Kansas	Mexico
Kentucky	Portugal
Louisiana	Nicaragua
Maine	Qatar
Maryland	Slovenia
Massachusetts	Cayman Islands
Michigan	Paraguay
Minnesota	Venezuela
Mississippi	Philippines
Missouri	Slovakia
Montana	Tunisia
Nebraska	Barbados
Nevada	Greece
New Hampshire	Turkmenistan
New Jersey	Singapore
New Mexico	Argentina
New York	Estonia
North Carolina	United Kingdom
North Dakota	Sierra Leone
Ohio	Mali
Oklahoma	Honduras
Oregon	Jordan
Pennsylvania	United States
Rhode Island	Saint Helena
South Carolina	Virgin Islands
South Dakota	Switzerland
Tennessee	Macedonia
Texas	Haiti
Utah	Oman
Vermont	Nigeria
Virginia	Djibouti
Washington	Bangladesh
West Virginia	Guinea-Bissau
Wisconsin	Lithuania
Wyoming	Jamaica

I just hope that someone finds this list and discovers how very much time it saves having it on hand.

Oh, I should have made this a picture, shouldn’t I? Too bad.

The Shrinking Mountain of New Zealand

I’d like to start out with a proof that I haven’t been to New Zealand. I feel like if I’m going to bring stuff like this to people’s attention I should have a ready alibi. Unfortunately, the fact is that I haven’t ever been to New Zealand — the closest I’ve ever been to New Zealand has been some emotional closeness with imaginary squirrels based out of there — and it is sadly impossible to prove a negative. At least, I think it’s impossible to prove a negative, although I don’t suppose I have seen that demonstrated. Well, it’s probably true enough.

What’s got me on this is that apparently New Zealand’s tallest mountain has come up about a hundred feet shorter than everyone thought it was. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but I also don’t want the hassle of being suspected by New Zealand police or, worse, angry geologists. They’re people who are very skilled with rocks, and I’m very bad at flinching, so all I can do if they’re going to be riled up is not be the person they’re riled at. But according to a survey by the University of Otago in November 2013, Mount Cook, also called Aoraki, comes in at 3,724 meters tall, whereas it used to be figured at 3,754 meters tall, and they’re using the same old meters both cases so don’t go thinking that’s the problem.

So if we’re all agreed that I’m not to blame for shrinking any mountains anywhere near New Zealand, and if we’re not then I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to have a civil conversation and must face the prospect that we’ll learn how well we can flinch from rocks, we can get to wondering where the mountain height went. I guess the first thing to check is if maybe they shrank the typeface they’re using to label the thing “Mount Cook, also called Aoraki”. Maybe someone figured instead of mixed case it should be put up on the mountain in small caps instead, and that makes the whole name just run out too long and they had to make the letters less tall to compensate. You might ask how this could possibly make a difference; I say, don’t underestimate typeface enthusiasts. They’ve got to have been looking at that “r” in Aoraki and thinking how magnificent it would look in capitals, even small capitals. There are some lovely things to be done with a “k” as well, if it’s balanced right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they slipped a “W” into the name, regardless of what it does to the ordering of New Zealand mountain heights.

And apparently it hasn’t done anything about New Zealand mountain height orderings, if I understand right. The second-tallest mountain, Mount Second Tallest Mountain Or Something, is still second-tallest and doesn’t seem to be gaining any. This, of course, rules out a couple possibilities for how Mount Cook, Also Called Aoraki, might have shrunk. Apparently people weren’t swiping height from the first to boost other mountains that anybody’s caught, for example. I guess we can rule out that everyone’s just standing a little bit taller so the mountains appear to be shorter, since that would affect all the other mountains just as much and we’d be seeing widespread reports of New Zealanders discovering stuff they forgot was on top of the refrigerator.

Of course, wouldn’t it be something if someone were swiping height from Mount Cook, Also Called Aoraki, and were turning it into extra width or depth of other mountains by the simple process of rotating it in three-dimensional space? Has anyone done a careful measurement of just how fat the mountains of New Zealand are lately? If they haven’t, can we be positive this isn’t what’s going on? And before you go chuckling that of course the people responsible for mountain checking would notice and report on any mountain fatness before announcing the mysterious loss of height, consider that these same mountain-checkers didn’t notice exactly when their tallest mountain went and shrunk some. There’s obviously plenty of chances for mischief.

It just struck me I shouldn’t say the mountain has come up a hundred feet shorter. I should probably do something about that.