Everything About Everywhere

July 10, 2003 4:56 AM

Nation Master An amazing resource that displays all sorts of comparative national statistics on practically everything, and with an option of selecting any region / list of countries you choose. It plugs itself as "The world's biggest general stat site" (which might or might not be true I don't know), and it has a wealth of data on economics, sports, population, geography and a dozen more categories. Some interesting statistics; Top 100 in Olympic medals per Capita. Top 100 Murders with firearms (per capita). Top 100 Military Expenditures as a percent of GDP . Top 100 Net migration rate .
A heaven for data freaks.
posted by talos (30 comments total)

Nice find, talos. The stat that most shocked me so far is under per capita economic aid donors: South Korea and Saudi Arabia don't even register... can that be right?
posted by stonerose at 5:13 AM on July 10, 2003

Denmark fourth biggest ecological footprint worldwide? What are they doing??
posted by klaatu at 5:25 AM on July 10, 2003

And why is New Caledonia getting tooled up?
posted by klaatu at 5:27 AM on July 10, 2003

Ha - The UK has 1 medal in all summer olympics, but 60 at Sydney......
posted by brettski at 5:29 AM on July 10, 2003

stonerose: I think it's a bug... Data not entered or something. Apparently they've been up for a couple of months only and still are somewhat buggy (i.e. they display Albania in EU statistic tables).
posted by talos at 5:33 AM on July 10, 2003

Right, talos. Let me take this opportunity to apologize to the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Please, no fatwah. And to South Korea... well, good luck with that reunification thing.
posted by stonerose at 5:43 AM on July 10, 2003

Denmark fourth biggest ecological footprint worldwide? What are they doing??

They burn a lot of coal for power, even given that they have lots of wind power, a low energy intensity and that high taxes have helped to drive down domestic energy use.
Having said that, they only rate 12th on CO2 emissions, so what else they're doing I don't know. Lots of pig farming may have some impact. Depends what the statisticians are including in calculating the footprint.
posted by biffa at 5:45 AM on July 10, 2003

brettski: And I don't know how they work out the FIFA ranking of the United Kingdom, seeing as there is no United Kingdom team...

Nice link though. There are some eye-opening statistics in there, assuming the data is correct.
posted by salmacis at 5:57 AM on July 10, 2003

What effect would Greenland have on Denmark's ecological footprint, assuming it's part of the calculations? *wonders*
posted by plep at 6:04 AM on July 10, 2003

One thing I wish they'd do is define the categories better and explain the numbers a little more. How does North Korea rank best in economic freedom? What do they mean by economic freedom? It's not explained on the site, although they do cite the Heritage Foundation as the source of this stat, so I was able to find out more with a little digging.

I love statistics, but this isn't helpful, useful, or edifying unless they define their terms a little better. Some things are obvious (which country has the highest literacy rate? Denmark) but many of these are not.

That said, the tops and bottoms page is quite fun.
posted by acridrabbit at 6:06 AM on July 10, 2003

Talos - this is a great find!

The US leads the world!

Citizens in jail: #1
Citizens in jail, per capita: #1
Adults prosecuted, per capita: #1

Ecological footprint: #2

Balance of trade deficit: #1 (425 billion in 2001)
External debt: #1 (865 billion, 1995 est. - per capita, the US is actually fairly low)


CO2 production, per capita: #1


But the US is lagging in some categories:

Economic aid donation, per capita: #20 (Norway leads, at $310 per capita vs. $24.60 per capita in the US)

Assaults, per capita: only #6

International Treaties and Conventions ratified or signed on to: #27
posted by troutfishing at 6:15 AM on July 10, 2003

scary aids figures
posted by andrew cooke at 6:19 AM on July 10, 2003

However, I was dismayed to discover that Iraq has no oil reserves at all. This means that the various Bush Adminstration denials about the significance of Iraqi oil to America's motives for invading Iraq (about the widely held belief around the world that the US invaded Iraq for it's oil) were doubly lies: the US did not invade Iraq for oil - a perposterous claim - because Iraq has no oil!
posted by troutfishing at 6:22 AM on July 10, 2003

I'm a little skeptical to some of the stats.
Compare this to this.
posted by spazzm at 6:37 AM on July 10, 2003

Can anyone explain why India prosecutes so many females? They've almost got us beat.
posted by graventy at 6:47 AM on July 10, 2003

Denmark's fishing industry may hurt them a lot in teh ecological footprint department as well.

The funniest stat is that the Bahamas has 16 olympic medals / 1000 people. My high school had 1000 people and we had trouble finding 16 people good enough to make up a b-league soccer team.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:48 AM on July 10, 2003

statistic: drug access
top result: 95-100%
top country: United Kingdom

Rock 'n' Roll, rule britannia.
posted by johnnyboy at 6:55 AM on July 10, 2003

Excellent post. Unfortunately, statistics outside democratic countries are simply inaccurate or made up. Anyway, North Korea spends almost 32 % of its GDP on military stuff folks! Have a nice day!
posted by 111 at 7:02 AM on July 10, 2003

Can anyone explain why India prosecutes so many females

I'm guessing that its because you are looking at the total number of females prosecuted, not the per capita graph. India has a massive population. This graph may appear more reasonable
posted by arha at 7:15 AM on July 10, 2003

Statistics inside democratic countries are often inaccurate or made up, too. Case in point: I'm in the Philadelphia PA area. A few years ago, Philly hired John Timoney, a protege of Rudy Giuliani, to clean up the notoriously inefficient and corrupt Philadelphia Police Department. One of the things Timoney discovered was that the local precincts had been covering up crimes to make their stats look better. For example, a raped woman who was taken to a hospital for examination was often recorded as a 'hospital case' (as if they had transported someone with a twisted ankle) instead of 'alleged rape'. Assaults were recorded as disturbances, and so forth. No grand conspiracy, just a bunch of Joe Sixpack's with insufficient ethics working in a system that encouraged petty dishonesty of this kind.

I'm sure this goes on around the world. It's very difficult to know what actual crime rates are. France, for example, reports fewer incidents of anti-semitism per capita than the US, but given the political climate in France, I wonder how many are simply ignored by police and never recorded.

The one exception is murder, which everyone takes very seriously, and which is difficult to cover up.

I found the 'tops and bottoms' page less useful than it might have been, because many of the figures are totals, rather than per capita. Yes, I'm sure tiny Pacific island nations with tiny populations have a small total number of crimes, no shit.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:19 AM on July 10, 2003

Statistics inside democratic countries are often inaccurate or made up, too.

Silthy_Tove, you're right, democracy is a necessary but not sufficient condition to gather accurate data. Actually, trying to capture precise figures at any given moment is almost always elusive-- there are too many ways to misconstrue, hide or ignore relevant info. spazzm's second link on the coastline paradox is fascinating and actually rings a bell when it comes to information: the more you gather, the more you're likely to get lost, as in the Warren Report.
posted by 111 at 7:48 AM on July 10, 2003

arha, actually, I think one of the reasons I was confused is that India isn't listed under 'adults prosecuted'. Which...doesn't make sense, but the site's a little flawed.
posted by graventy at 7:53 AM on July 10, 2003

Top 100 Murders with firearms (per capita).
Woohoo! We're Number One! We're Number One! Oh.. #1 is a bad thing. Never mind.
posted by PenDevil at 7:53 AM on July 10, 2003

You can tell that they're still putting the thing together. Check out the library books page, frex -- They list Georgia as having the most library books (76M). But I can't help but think that you'd top that if you added up the collections of the biggest 50 research libraries in the US.

And Canada only has 7.3M library books? I'd bet that the U of T has more than that, alone, and wonder if Canada was reporting 1000's of books and not books.

But it's still fabulous. You can also do a lot of similar stuff at the CIA world factbook.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:44 AM on July 10, 2003

I found gender ratio statistics interesting. If these stats are accurate some of the countries with the higher Male/Female ratio are in the middle east: Qatar (a whooping 2.4 Males per Female), Kuwait (1.77), United Arab Emirates (1.68), Oman (1.53), Bahrain (1.43), Saudi Arabia (1.39), Jordan (1.14). Some with the Higher Female to Male ratio are islands: Virgin Islands (1.22 Females per Male), N. Mariana Islands (1.14), Netherlands Antilles (1.10), Puerto Rico and Montserrat (1.09). (All for the 15 to 64 years old range)
posted by golo at 8:51 AM on July 10, 2003

Economic aid donation, per capita: #20 (Norway leads, at $310 per capita vs. $24.60 per capita in the US)

Norway's #1 again!

Just doing my part to increase Norway's blip on the horizon.
posted by widdershins at 9:33 AM on July 10, 2003

golo: Those gender ratios probably reflect the great number of "Gastarbeiter" in oil-rich countries.
posted by Zurishaddai at 10:07 AM on July 10, 2003

Most rapes? United States.

I wonder how many of these occur in fraternity houses.
posted by the fire you left me at 10:12 AM on July 10, 2003

Uh, fire? That's partly because the US has a large population. Try rapes per capita.

Or actually, don't try anything. Rape is notoriously under-reported, and I'm willing to bet the rate of reporting varies hugely from culture to culture, depending on the status of women, religious issues, and other cultural factors. Does Canada really have twice as many rapes per capita as the US, and Indonesia 1/30th as many? Heh. Right.

I have no idea what the rate of rape is in the US, or anywhere else. I don't even have any idea how to find out, given the emotionally loaded nature of the crime.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 11:09 AM on July 10, 2003

You know what's cool? Rape never ever occurs in Yemen, Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia. That's good to know. Thank God for nationmaster.
posted by shoos at 5:57 AM on July 11, 2003