This page gathers seventeen charts that went viral in 2014, covering everything from how Facebook activity changes when two people fall in love to which animals kill the most humans each year. Each one is a small, surprising window into how people live, work, spend and die. The catch is that a striking chart is only as good as the question behind it: who was counted, in which year, using what source. So under every graphic below you will find what it actually measures, where the numbers came from (where we could trace them) and what to keep in mind before repeating the headline figure.
The collection was first passed around by Acidcow and Memolition in September 2014. Many of the figures have changed since, which is a useful lesson in itself: a statistic is a snapshot, not a permanent fact.
Love, money and the internet
Facebook posts before and after a couple gets together. In February 2014 Facebook data scientist Carlos Diuk published "The Formation of Love", based on anonymised timeline activity. Posts between two future partners climb slowly for about 100 days, peak at roughly 1.67 a day about 12 days before the relationship becomes official, then fall once they are a couple. The likely explanation is simple: people who are together spend more time talking offline and less time posting on each other's walls.
What $100 buys in each U.S. state. The Tax Foundation built this map from the Bureau of Economic Analysis "regional price parities", which compare local price levels with the national average. In 2014 $100 went furthest in Mississippi (worth about $115) and least far in the District of Columbia (about $85). It is a reminder that the same salary can mean very different living standards depending on where you live.
Age distribution on social networks. This chart sorts 24 sites by the average age of their users, using Google DoubleClick Ad Planner data from June 2012. Younger audiences clustered on deviantART, Hacker News and Orkut, while LinkedIn, Yelp and Facebook skewed older. Several of these sites have since closed or shrunk, so the chart is now mostly a portrait of the internet of 2012.
Every device connected to the internet. This glowing world map was produced with Shodan, a search engine that scans the internet for connected devices such as servers, webcams and routers. The bright clusters follow wealth and population: North America, Europe and East Asia shine, while large parts of Africa stay dark. It shows device density, not the number of people online.
Broadband speed versus price. Using OECD data, this chart compares the advertised speed of high-speed broadband (45 Mbps or more) with the monthly price in different countries. South Korea offered about 100 Mbps for well under $20, while the United States paid the most in the group for slower plans. Prices are adjusted for cost of living, which makes the comparison fairer than raw dollar figures.
Health, life and death
U.S. causes of death in 1900 and 2010. Data scientist Randy Olson turned figures from a 2012 New England Journal of Medicine article into this stacked chart. In 1900 infectious diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhoea dominated, and the total death rate was far higher. By 2010 heart disease and cancer led, largely because vaccines, antibiotics and clean water allowed people to live long enough to develop chronic illness.
Teen pregnancy, birth and abortion rates. This Guttmacher Institute chart (2014) tracks rates per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in the United States. All three peaked around 1990 and then fell steadily to historic lows by 2010. Guttmacher researchers have linked most of the decline to better contraceptive use rather than to teenagers having less sex.
Where donations go versus what kills us. Designer David Mendoza compared money raised by major U.S. charity campaigns with the number of deaths each disease causes. Breast cancer campaigns raised far more than heart disease campaigns, even though heart disease killed many more Americans. The chart is a fair prompt to think about giving, though a disease's death toll is not the only measure of need: research costs, survival rates and government funding also matter.
The world's deadliest animals. Bill Gates published this chart on his Gates Notes blog in April 2014 to launch a "Mosquito Week". It estimated that mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria killed about 725,000 people a year, humans killed about 475,000 and snakes about 50,000, while sharks and wolves killed around ten each. The mosquito figure counts deaths from the diseases they carry, and the creators noted wide error margins.
The odds of being murdered. The Economist printed this "interactive" chart: throw a dart at the page, and the red box shows how likely a man is to be murdered in a year. In Honduras in 2012 the odds were about 1 in 599, compared with roughly 1 in 256,000 in Singapore. Over a whole lifetime, the magazine noted, the Honduran risk added up to something close to one in nine.
Prices, schools and work
Income taxes paid by individuals and corporations. This chart plots U.S. federal income tax revenue as a share of GDP since the late 1940s. Taxes paid by individuals stayed fairly level at around 8 percent of GDP, while corporate income taxes fell from about 5 to 7 percent after the war to roughly 2 percent. The original creator of the chart is not given, so it is best read alongside official historical tables from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Textbook prices versus consumer prices. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, this Economist chart shows U.S. college textbook prices rising well over 1,000 percent from the late 1970s to 2014, roughly three times as much as overall consumer prices. Publishers point to development costs, while critics blame bundled access codes and a captive market. Rental schemes and open textbooks have grown partly in response.
SAT scores by family income. College Board figures for 2013 show average SAT scores in maths, reading and writing rising steadily with each step up in family income. Students from families earning over $200,000 scored roughly 100 points higher per section than those from the lowest bracket. The gap reflects access to tutoring, better-funded schools and other advantages rather than ability alone.
Culture and everyday life
Why people walk more in cities. These maps, credited to Lawrence Frank & Co. and the Sightline Institute, compare how far you can get on a one-mile walk in Seattle's Phinney Ridge, with its grid of streets, and in a cul-de-sac suburb of Bellevue, Washington. The grid lets a walker reach far more homes, shops and services. Urban planners use this kind of "walkshed" comparison to explain why street design shapes how much people walk.
Top-selling electronic music genres. This chart ranks electronic dance music styles by sales position each year from 2004 to 2014. Deep house and tech house climbed to the top, while breaks faded and dubstep shot up around 2009 before falling back. It captures how quickly club fashions change.
How much football is in a football game. A Wall Street Journal study of four NFL broadcasts in December 2009 found that the ball was in play for only about 11 minutes of a roughly three-hour telecast. About an hour went to commercials and up to 75 minutes to shots of players standing around, huddling and lining up. Replays took more time than the live action, while cheerleaders appeared for an average of about three seconds.
The "breathing" city. Joey Cherdarchuk of Dark Horse Analytics animated Manhattan's population hour by hour, showing people at work in orange and at home in blue, using Census Bureau and labour statistics. As the clock runs, Midtown and the Financial District fill up during the day and empty at night as commuters head home. It is a vivid way to show that a city's population is not one fixed number.
How to read a viral statistic
Before sharing a chart like these, it helps to ask four quick questions. Who or what was counted, and in which place? When was the data collected, and has it been updated since? What is the unit: a rate per 100,000, a percentage, a raw total or a share of GDP? And who made the graphic, and what source does it cite? A chart without a source line deserves extra caution.
Also watch for comparisons that mix different things. The charity chart sets fundraising campaigns against total deaths, which ignores government research budgets. The deadly-animals chart combines direct attacks with deaths from diseases animals carry. Neither is wrong, but each answers a narrower question than the headline suggests.
Finally, remember the date. Most of these figures describe 2012 to 2014. Teen birth rates, broadband prices and the popularity of social networks have all moved since, so treat the collection as a fascinating time capsule and a starting point for checking the latest numbers.
Sources: Quartz on the Facebook Data Science "Formation of Love" study; Smithsonian Magazine on the deadliest-animals chart; FOX Sports on the Wall Street Journal NFL broadcast study; Tax Foundation maps; Guttmacher Institute; Dark Horse Analytics blog; Memolition (2014 collection, via Acidcow).
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