Category Archives: Stats

Monday statistic

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Last year the number of students taking a creative arts exam in the UK fell by 51,000. Arts subjects, including design, drama and art, now account for only 1 in 12 GCSEs. Four years ago it was 1 in 8. A national scandal.

If we want our children – and our children’s children – to compete with machines that can think, I agree with Lucy Noble, Artistic & Commercial Director of the Royal Albert Hall,  that an arts subject should be compulsory at GCSE, although I’d add philosophy to the list of compulsory subjects too.

Stat of the week

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Windfarms across the UK generated more electricity in 2016 than coal power plants for the first time ever, according to an analyst’s estimates. Three major coal power plants closed in 2016, causing coal electricity generation to plummet to 9.2%, down from 22.6% in 2015. Wind power provided 11.5% of generation in 2016, slightly down from 12% in 2015. Renewables also made up almost nine-tenths of new power capacity added to Europe’s electricity grids recently.

(The Guardian).

Focus on the self

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Here’s a little gem from Time magazine (20 May 2013).

In the 1950s families displayed a wedding photo, a school photo and maybe a military photo in their homes. The average middle class American family now walks amid 85 pictures of themselves and their pets.

But that’s not the good bit. This is…the average American 1-year-old has more images of themselves than a 17th Century French king.

Show me the money

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Pretty much done with the re-write of my chapter on money. Just left to to print it off on paper and read it through with a glass of red wine in hand (yes, I know about the quote about write drunk and edit sober, but it’s only a glass). I’ll post the revised chapter later this week.

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to Jonathan Franzen on the radio talking about the internet. Very relevant to Digital Vs. Human. Good article in the Guardian on this here.

In this vein (the Internet being like a totalitarian state) I also recently read that in East Germany, at the hight of the Cold War, 1 in 63 people was a state informant. Thank goodness they didn’t have access to Instagram and Twitter.

Looking without seeing

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Screen Shot 2015-09-16 at 15.35.42

 

This is a good one. Did you know that the average ‘dwell time’ (horrible phrase) for the Mona Lisa is 17 seconds? In other words, the amount of time people spend looking at the most famous painting in the world is a quarter of a minute.

What are they looking at? What are they looking for?

I’m using this ‘fact’ as an opener for a workshop with PWC in Warsaw. The point isn’t so much that looking for longer with reveal something of importance (although it may) but that deep looking will reveal other, non-related, thoughts that could have considerable value.

Try it today. Fix your eyes on something, a tree, a cloud, a building, for between 3-5 minutes (please don’t select a phone or computer or anything that moves or makes a disruptive sound) and literally ‘see’ what happens.

OMG

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40% of Americans are expecting Jesus to return by 2050.

40% of Americans are expecting Jesus to return by 2050.

 

Approximately 40% of Americans are expecting Jesus to return by the year 2050.

More on this from PEW Research Center on this link.

(Photo by yours truly in Athens last week. I think he’s been waiting quite a while).