Stats that are surprising

[Ontobetterthings]

I came across a stat online earlier that said 80% of the world's population hasn't been on a plane. Aibu to find this so surprising?

What other stats have you come across which suprised you?

I was really surprised to find out that more than 50% of households take more out of the system than they pay in.

On top of that, 50% of all the tax comes from just 6.5% of the population!!

And as a nerd, there are so many variations of how to shuffle a pack of cards that its likely that no two shuffled card decks have ever been the same! I worked that out age 18 when I did A Level further maths!

Around 51-52% of Americans have never had a passport.

Yet in the UK, only around 13% of Brits have never had one.

To be fair, America is so absolutely huge and going from state to state - eg Texas to California, or Florida to Montana - is like going to a foreign country where they all speak a similar language. I can see why they don't feel the same need to travel, you have everything imaginable by way of variation and every holiday and experience money can buy at your fingertips.

Whereas Great Britain is so absolutely tiny, and despite the language/accent differences very much the same sad, poor, poverty stricken and civil warn torn place from Land's End to John O'Groats (not forgetting Northern Ireland), so getting away is a luxury experience.

73.6% of statistics are made up.

60% of career advancement relies on exposure, 30% on image as opposed to 10% actual Performance according to the P. I. E model.

Can tell you don't know Great Britain if you think everywhere is sad, poor, poverty stricken and civil war torn. Do you believe everything Trump tells you?

Only 5% of pilots worldwide are women. Not surprising from what we see, but surprising that it isn't a lot higher in today's world.

America is so big not only do they never need to leave the country, they also don't need to learn anything about any other countries because they know everything already.

That private schools aren’t really folding, even though 5 have closed in my area in the last 18 months.

Yeah I found that comment by @OhFFS26 odd too! 😬

there are so many variations of how to shuffle a pack of cards that its likely that no two shuffled card decks have ever been the same

It's crazier than that. The best way is imagine every second a deck of cards is shuffled into a new configuration.
Meanwhile every billion years you take one step forward and after you had gone all the way round the world with this method you put a teaspoon of water in the grand canyon and then repeat the one step forward every billion years routine putting another teaspoon of water in the grand canyon. Once you had repeated this enough times that the grand canyon is completely full you empty it and put a sheet of paper on the ground then repeat the whole procedure. If you keep going till the pile of sheets of paper reaches the sun, the card shuffler will be about a third of the way through all the possible combinations of cards.

That one third of men in the UK have a criminal record.

I'm tired so will explain this badly, but I am always a bit mind blown by the statistics around prostitute use and also domestic abuse.

Apparently around 10% of men in the UK are estimated to have used a prostitute. Around 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.

I'm in no way disputing that these are true, and obviously people don't necessarily go around telling people these things. But having never knowingly met someone in real life that I know has experienced domestic abuse and not met a man who I know has used a prostitute, I periodically think to myself how I must know plenty of people impacted by both statistics.

It makes me very sad to think of all the women I know and hold dear who statistically will have been impacted. And it makes me feel rather suspicious of men in general because obviously most people think it won't be any of the men they know, but of course they are hiding in plain sight.

110% of made up statistics are exaggerated to the point of absurdity.

What?🤣🤣

1 child under 10 dies each year for every 11,000 swimming pools. 1 child under 10 dies each year for every 1 million guns. Pools are 90 times more dangerous than guns.

25% of the worlds supply of hazelnuts are for Nutella 😱😱😱

Also the sheer size of the solar system and space generally. Eg if it took 230 days to travel to Mars it would take over 113000 years to reach the next solar system.

That and cosmic bubble collapse and that it could happen and happen so quickly we wouldn't know. We would just... Not be here anymore (along with the rest of the universe) https://www.abovethenormnews.com/2026/05/24/false-vacuum-decay-universe-2025/

If you drew a timeline including the Egyptian pyramids, Cleopatra and life today, Cleopatra would sit closer to today.

If all time since earth was formed was a clock, humans arrived at 5 to 12.

Only 1% of babies is fully breastfed at the age of six months.

More babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome than with autism. It’s a hugely underestimated issue.

That more adult nappies are sold these days than nappies for babies. It was such a stark example of how the population is changing.
With the US & passports, I only learned last year that US citizens can travel to some central & South American countries without a passport. So they may have left the US, just to one of these countries. The person who told me this was off to Guatemala

Well a quarter of all Brits do. That includes things like motor offences though.

Roe v Wade legalised abortion across the USA in 1973. In the early 90s, there was a significant and unexpected drop in crime rates across the USA. As access to abortion was believed to be a factor, states such as New York and California where it was legalised before 1973 were studied, and their crime rates dropped correspondingly earlier. The proportion of the reduction in crime due to access to abortion is disputed. In 2022, US supreme court struck down Roe v Wade, so in about 15 years further study will be possible.

This is a shocking statistic considering only 30% of babies are tounge tied and only 5% of mothers have clinically low supply. However this is an old stat and the 2024 BF survey states 26% of babies are exclusively BF at 6 months. This includes expressed milk. The first survey did not include expressed BM.

28% is better but still so low.