Reporters Without Borders released this week its freedom of the press report for 2013. According to the report, countries where press freedoms are curtailed the most are Turkmenistan, North Korea, Eritrea. In contrast, the countries where freedom of the press is respected the most are Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway. The map above shows the state of world press freedoms for 2013.
The map above provides a sobering look at road fatalities in the US. Created by ITO World using the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the map shows virtually every single fatality that occurred in the roads of the United States as a result of a vehicle collision between 2001 and 2009. You can zoom in to read details about each fatality.
Approximately 1.3 million people die each year on the world’s roads, according to the 2009 Global Status Report on Road Safety published by the World Health Organization (WHO). Using data from the report, we created the two maps shown above. The first map shows the total number of road traffic deaths by country. The map shows that India (105 thousand) and China (96 thousand) have the highest number of road traffic deaths, which is not surprising given their large populations and large number of registered vehicles. It is worth noting though that while there were approximately 145 million registered vehicles in China in 2009, the total for India was only 72 million. In other words, India had a much higher rate of road traffic deaths per registered vehicle than China.
The second map shows the number of road traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The largest rates of road traffic deaths occur in Eritrea (48.4), Egypt (41.6), and Libya (40.5). The map also shows that relatively high rates of road traffic deaths occur in many countries in Africa and the Middle East.
We return to the excellent WomanStats Project to share a map they created illustrating which countries allow marriage of girls who are under 16 years of age. You’ll notice from the map that there are many countries in Africa where underage marriage is common. Other regions of the world where the practice is widespread include the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania.
Martin Elmer created the fantastically entertaining world map shown above using Wikipedia. Each country in the map is represented by the most frequently used word in every Wikipedia article entitled “History of ___”. The results are somewhat predictable in many cases, as in having the word Soviet as the most common word in the History of Russia article (172 occurrences as of today), or the word Kim in the History of North Korea article (68 occurrences). Other results are perhaps a little bit less predictable, and yet they still make a lot of sense for those familiar with the history of each nation. Zoom in on Europe and you’ll quickly realize that War is the most frequent word for almost all countries in Western Europe. Which is the most common word in the corresponding article for your country?
The excellent data blog from The Guardian created an interactive visualization showing murder rates in the world’s most populous cities. The data, obtained from the UN, shows that Caracas, Guatemala City, and Basseterre have the highest homicide rates, while Lisbon, Ljubljana, and Tokyo have the lowest. You can read more details about their analysis in the accompanying article.
We just launched a new section with facts about the United Kingdom, its countries, and regions. We started with basic population indicators; we’ll be adding additional indicators over the coming weeks. Click on the following links to explore the thematic maps, ranking charts, and data tables we have so far:
A Gallup survey aimed at gauging the daily emotional responses of people around the world reveals which countries are the world’s most and least emotional. Max Fisher at the Washington Post created the map above and summarized the results of the survey as follows:
How emotional is your country according to the Gallup survey?
We recently added Colombian coal to the list of commodities that we track in our commodities section. You can now analyze the average monthly price of Colombian coal for the past 30 years, as seen in the graph below.
In addition to monthly price data, we also have production, consumption, exports, and imports of Colombian coal in terms of quantity, and value in dollars of Colombian coal exports and imports.
As we start analyzing the results of the 2012 presidential election in the US, it is becoming clear that political polarization continues to increase across the country. Take North Carolina for instance. As the thematic maps above show, the number of counties where the Republican party won by 40% or more reached a new high in 2012. This year there were 14 deeply red counties, compared to only 4 in 2008. On the other hand, there were 10 deeply red counties in 2004, which suggests that 2008 was an outlier due to the extraordinary circumstances that allowed Obama to win the state.