This material supports Chapter 3 of our book: ‘Communicating with Data Visualisation’ (Sage, 2021).

It’s important to find an emotionally arresting statistic or story before you start visualising.

These stats all jumped out at me, and made me want to find out more. They are in no particular order. Some would make better visuals than others.

• One in six US women would rather be blind than obese. (Source)

• There are more African American men in the US penal system today than there were slaves before Emancipation. (Source)

• There are more men called David heading up UK FTSE-100 companies than there are women (Source).

• In 1900, there were an estimated 250,000 blue whales in the sea. Now there are fewer than 10,000 (Source).

• 44% of Republicans think Bill Gates wants to use covid-19 vaccines to implant microchips in people (Source).

• In 2019, two-thirds of Americans supported the legalisation of marijuana (Source).

• 10% of Twitter users send 80% of tweets (Source).

• At the end of World War II, 20% of Nazi admirals and 14% of Luftwaffe generals shot themselves (Source).

• 42% of US adults believe that spiritual energy can be located in an object like a crystal (Source).

• The number of British people saying that homosexuality is ‘not at all wrong’ rose from 11% in 1987 to 69% in 2017 (Source). 

• Humans get almost half of their daily calories from just three crops: maize, rice and wheat (Source).

• A storm cloud can weigh up to one million tonnes (Source).

• To make the tunnels used in the ‘great escape’ from Stalag prison camp, the prisoners-of-war stole 90 bunk beds, 635 mattresses, 62 tables, 76 benches, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 3,424 towels and 1,700 blankets (Source).

• After the Chicxulub asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs managed to survive for another 700,000 years. (Source)

• There's a kind of jellyfish called Turritopsis that is technically immortal (unless it’s eaten). (Source)

• In 1961, Matisse's 'Le Bateau' was hung in a US art gallery for 47 days before someone noticed it was upside down. (Source)

• Johannes Relleke holds the record for suffering the most bee stings (without dying). He was stung 2,443 times in a South African tin mine. The stings were removed and counted. (Source)

• In 2007, Manjit Singh pulled a jumbo jet for 13 feet with his ears. (Source).

• The average British car is used 4% of the time. For the other 96% of the time, it’s parked. (Source).

• In a 2019 survey, 1 in 10 British people happily said they’d go on a one-way trip to Mars with no prospect of return.

• Pandas poo 40 times a day. This is because they eat 20kg of bamboo a day and they are biologically incapable of digesting most of it. Sloths poo about once a week. Hibernating bears don’t poo at all. (Source).

• About half a million people are flying at any given moment. This doesn’t include the six people on the International Space Station. (Source).

• In the original Native American version of lacrosse, there could be up to 1,000 players on each team. The pitch would be up to 3 kilometres long.

• Let’s imagine you ate 40 bars of chocolate, each of them 250 grams. What would happen next? You'd (probably) die. 10 kilograms of chocolate is judged to be a lethal dose. So is drinking 140 cups of coffee (in one go). (Source).

• Until the early twentieth century, it was legal for a Japanese man to divorce his wife if she was left-handed. Even today, 98% of naturally left-handed Japanese students use their right hands to write. (Source).

• In 2006, an Australian man tried to sell New Zealand on the internet. The bid reached $3,000 before it was taken down.

• Only one planet in the solar system is named after a woman. Venus.

• Sharks kill an average of five people each year. People kill an average of 100 million sharks each year. (Source).

• The most stolen book from public libraries is reportedly the Guinness Book of Records. This fact is NOT in the Guinness Book of Records. (Source).

• Australia is home to 20 of the 25 most venomous snakes in the world. New Zealand has no snakes. (Nor does Ireland). (Source).

• All 100 of the world’s highest mountains are in Asia. They are all higher than 7,000 metres (including Everest). There are no mountains over 7,000 metres on any other continent.

• When William Herschel first discovered Uranus in 1781, he wanted to call it George. (To be fair, the King of England was called George at the time).

• If a snake bites itself, nothing happens. Most snakes are immune to their own venom.

• In its six-week lifespan, each bee can make about one-eighth of a teaspoon of honey. (Source).

• Around 1% of the world has red hair. In Scotland, the figure is 13%. (Source).

• In 2013, Heidi Hankins achieved an IQ of 159, making her one of the UK's smartest people. She was four years old at the time.

If you want to find your own interesting stats, try the Pew Research Center, Yougov, New Scientist, Wired, Mental Floss or the Guinness Book of Records.