May 9, 2011

New statistics on drug transits through West Africa

A recent report from the World Bank notes that 25 tons of cocaine, valued at US$1 billion, was shipped from Latin America through West African countries (including especially Ghana) to reach Europe, where its street value was estimated at $6.8 billion. Worldwide value, heroin: $65 billion Worldwide value, cocaine: $88 billion Heroin, % of global total consumed by Europe/North America: 53% Cocaine, % of global total consumed by Europe/North America: 67% Organized crime, annual revenues: $120 billion to $330 billion See GhanaWeb.com.

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May 6, 2011

82% of those in Russia believe in God

New Statistics in Russia: A new survey, conducted by the Public Opinion Forum, has found that 82% of Russians believe in God (and 5% would say they had difficulty in answering). Of those who were professed atheists, 68% were men and 32% were women. However, 27% of professed believers in God do not belong to an organized religion. Some 50% professed to be Russian Orthodox, and 4% were Muslim. Orthodox respondents, however, may be considering themselves as Russian and therefore Orthodox; just 3% said they attended services on a weekly basis. (Source: AsiaNews.it)

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May 5, 2011

China’s 2010 Census Results

Reuters has a factbox summary of China’s 2010 Census results. Some key pieces of data: Total population, 2010: 1.34 billion Annual growth rate, 2010: 0.57% Annual growth rate, 2000: 1.07% This represents an increase of nearly 100 million people over the past ten years. The growth rate, obviously, is slowing. Note that this population includes Taiwan, interestingly enough. The population is notably aging. In 2000, a quarter of China’s population was under the age of 14. Now, just 16% is. Meanwhile those aged 60 or more had increased from 10% to 13%. Note that this census, for the first time, [...]

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May 5, 2011

UK Cathedrals see growth in congregations

Here are a bunch of interesting statistics on the growth in cathedral congregations over the past decade: collectively, by about 37% since 2000. (But the article doesn’t say how many cathedrals there are in the UK. Anyone know and want to add in comments?) There are numerous other statistics in this article as well: Sunday service attendance in cathedrals: 15,800 adults + 3,100 children Total weekly attendance: 27,400 adults + 7,600 children Apparently this does not include Westminster Abbey which adds another 1,800 per week. Source: Christianity Today

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July 4, 2010

Statistical Journal: July 2010

Mobile phones worldwide Total cell phone subscribers, 2010: 5 billion Total mobile broadband subscribers, 2010: 1 billion Total mobile broadband subscribers, 2009: 600 million Source: International Telecommunications Union As more and more people are using cell phones for communications, banking and even Internet access, we will need to modify websites and evangelistic material to be presentable on smaller screens. Daily status updates Twitter, total status updates per day, 2010: 50 million Twitter, total status updates per month, 2010: ~1 billion Twitter.com, total visitors: 75 million per month Total status updates per day is a more reliable measure of Twitter’s growth [...]

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May 14, 2010

Extreme poverty by 2015

http://bit.ly/aaN3Fd - A new World Bank/IMF report expects 920 million people will remain in extreme poverty by 2015.

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May 12, 2010

The orphan crisis

http://bit.ly/chd8j8 – Rick Warren: imagine a country half the size of the United States. That’s how many orphans there are in the world.

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April 24, 2010

New Statistics: Infant Mortality

Counting Malaria Out has statistics for Kenya’s River Tana area, infested by mosquitoes: 11% of mothers die before childbirth, 20% of children die before 5 years of age due to malaria. 70% of adults are jobless. Casual jobs bring about $1.25/day, which cannot provide food for a family. A mosquito net costs $3.25/ea. Families cannot buy them and eat, but it’s hard to live without them.

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April 17, 2010

Rising Somalia Prostitution

Noticing an increase in searches to JustinLong.org on Somali prostitution, I began digging around. The UN last year reported a widespread rise in rape and prostitution in Somalia with the increasing chaos. This year, increasing piracy is disrupting the local fishing economy and introducing drugs, alcohol and prostitution. Human Rights Examiner likewise reported human trafficking is on the rise.

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April 16, 2010

Stats: Growth in Generational Prayer, more

Christianity Today has some great statistics from various sources on interesting topics (USA). Note the increase in prayer amongst all generational cohorts.

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April 7, 2010

How many Christians are in China?

Paul Hattaway has posted an extensive table of the number of Christians in China, with detailed statistics down to the prefecture & city level. He derives these from interviews as well as from over 2,000 published sources. A great, exhaustive, authoritative piece of research.

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March 29, 2010

India Statistics

300 Million go Hungry in India. India ranks 65th out of 88 countries. In Persecution Update India.

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March 29, 2010

TechStats: Global mobile data surpasses voice

Ericsson announced mobile data traffic surpassed voice traffic worldwide, amounting to more than 140,000 terabytes per month, generated by 400 million smartphones (vs. 4.6 billion mobile subscribers making voice calls). Mobile providers are worried about the capacity of their networks as smartphone usage grows. In ReadWriteWeb.

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March 22, 2010

China leads world in virtual spending

In 2009, Chinese spent about $5 billion on virtual goods (in online games, etc). The USA, by contrast, spent about $1 billion. In CNN.com

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March 22, 2010

Structure of Sin: Pornography Statistics

10 Insane but True Facts About Porn from Tim Chester’s new book. First stat: per second, 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography and spending $3,075.64 on porn. See also Child pornography in Japan: Outraged innocence (Economist): many countries are now trying to outlaw not just ‘real’ child pornography but also ‘virtual’ (anime, manga, etc) where there is “no real harm” to an actual child.

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March 21, 2010

Declines in poverty

The United Nations reports 227 million people escaped a life in the slums over the past 10 years. In BBC News.

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March 12, 2010

New Statistics: Global arms sales

Fast Company has a series of infographics illustrating arms sales around the world.

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March 9, 2010

Think like a statistician

FlowingData has a good little piece on how to “think like a statistician, without the math.”

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March 6, 2010

Swimming in seas of data

Statistics from the Economist and IDG highlight how much data we are creating: 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005 alone, and 1,200 exabytes in 2010. How do we use this for mission?

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February 25, 2010

New Statistics: Twitter Traffic

Status updates per day is the most reliable measure of growth in social networking sites, since many are accessed via third party clients. Twitter grew from 5,000 daily in 2007 to 300,000 daily in 2008 to 2.5 million daily in 2009 to 50 million daily today. (Twitter Blog)

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