Category Archives: Stats

Some Worrying China Statistics

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Some worrying data coming out of China. Electricity output slumped last month, up a mere 0.7% over 2011. State investment in railways is down 44%, road building is down 2.7% and 8 out of the country’s 10 largest ship builders have not received a single new order in 2012. Housing sales were down 25% during the 1st QTR and home construction was down 28.3% last month. This last figure is a real concern because housing employs 10% of the Chinese workforce while land sales make up 70% of local authority tax revenue and 30% of central government revenue. Loans are also down significantly too. Of course this could all be planned in the sense of it being meant to slow the economy down, but it’s worth watching very closely.

India and Russia are having much the same trouble too in terms of industrial output, lending and bad loans. The big concern here is not just the BRICs going bust, but the BRIC wall of global credit collapsing before the rest of the indebted world recovers from the worst of the recession. If you have any spare cash stick it under the mattress now.

Books (and a stat)

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Two books I like the sound of. The first is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Essentially this is about the transition from an age of character (actions) to one of personality (style) where the pressure to entertain and sell oneself (and never to be nervous or unsure about oneself) is growing rapidly. Here’s the central idea of the book: “Introverts living under the extrovert ideal are like women living in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.”

The second is It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway by David Satter. This is about Russia, its lost utopia, its nostalgia for community spirit, its demographic crisis and the rise of Putin. My take from reading a review of this book is that Russia is now primarily about lost empire and a desire to be feared.

A stat from the book (could have been another one on Russia, I can’t remember): When the Soviet Union fell apart its population stood at 150 million. By 2025 it will be between 121 million and 136 million according to the UN.

Stat of the week (and a book)

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In its last fiscal quarter, Apple sold more iPhones (37m) than babies were born in the world (36.3m). So, given that Apple products are now so popular, when will someone design a virus specifically targeting, say, iPhones?

BTW, I like the sound of this book (left). Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnov.

And, yes, I’ve also just noticed that I blogged the Apple stat a few weeks ago!

Creative Cities

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Found this last week…

Between 1551 and 1801 the population of London grew from 80,000 to 865,000. This was despite the fact that during this period overall deaths exceeded births in the capital.  This can partly be seen as London attracting migrants with energy and ideas, but can also be seen as people moving from the countryside because they had no choice, with traditional industries such as agriculture, spinning and weaving being hollowed out by mechanisation.

Jottings

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The blog is getting to be a bit of a struggle with two new books, both with the same deadline. Fortunately one is done, but I keep having ideas for things that should perhaps be included. And don’t anyone mention the stack of unread magazines or lost issues of Brainmail!

Anyway, it’s 6.05pm and I had enough of books for today, so here are a few snippets from my backlog of newspapers.

1. More than 25% of young people aged between 10 and 12 years of age in the UK now need a calculator to do basic sums. 33% don’t know how to use apostrophes either and their parents are now too busy to help them, with most parents spending less than 10 minutes helping kids learn per day.

2. A study from the University of Nebraska in the US says that right-wingers are more negatively inclined than liberals, who tend to look on the bright side. Reminds me of a quote that went something along the lines of left-wingers wanting to banish the past and right-wingers wanting to banish the future.

3. Another study (what do some people do all day?). This time it’s for Macmillan Cancer supports in the UK and it says that young people (thoseyoung people!) are surrounded by friends, but have very few that they can turn to in times of crisis. The survey of 1,000 people aged between 18 and 35 discovered that around 70% only had 2 or less real friends with 13% saying they had none at all. Apparently males are more likely to have fewer real friends than women.

The average number of Facebook friends remember is 130.

Reminds me of some research I quoted in Future Minds by sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University that found that Americans have fewer real friends than they used to. Back in 1985 the average American had 3 people to confide in about their problems. Now the figure is just 2. Fairly consistent then.

Too Much Stuff

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Are you suffering from stuffocation? There are 800 self-storage facilities in the UK, the same number as the whole of the rest of Europe put together. What are people keeping in there? Why can’t they just get rid of it? Is it some kind of national obsessive compulsive disorder?