ANYSTAT Blog

Data-driven articles and analysis
Brazil Took the Soybean Crown from America, and China Decided It

The United States led soybean production for most of the twentieth century. Brazil now grows more, and the reason has less to do with farmin...

The Beatles' 19 Number-One Albums and the Chart That Keeps Changing

The Beatles reached 19 number-one albums in barely six years. Taylor Swift and Drake are closing in, but the chart they are climbing works n...

The Most Decorated Teams in Esports, and What Their Records Reveal

One organisation has six League of Legends world titles. In Dota 2, eleven different teams have won and none has won three. The two records...

Brazil Grows So Much Coffee That Its Weather Sets the World Price

Brazil produces more coffee than the next two countries combined. That concentration is why a single cold night in Minas Gerais can move pri...

The World's Longest Bridges Are Almost All Railways

The four longest bridges ever built all carry trains, and none of them cross water. The reason is a piece of civil engineering economics mos...

Just Fontaine's 13 Goals Are the World Cup Record Nobody Will Break

Just Fontaine scored 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup — in a single tournament. The structure of the modern tournament makes that almost unrea...

Why Switzerland Sits Among the World's Largest Currency Reserves

Reserve rankings are usually a list of export powerhouses. Switzerland is third, and it got there by a completely different route from every...

Why Per-Capita Emissions Rankings Look Nothing Like Total Emissions

China and India lead the world on total CO2 output and appear nowhere in the per-capita top eight. Both rankings are correct. They are answe...

China Makes More Cement Than the Rest of the World Combined

China poured more concrete in three years than the United States did in the entire twentieth century. The production data explains how, and...

Where Do People Live Longest? Life Expectancy Leaders in 2024

Monaco tops the world at 87 years, with Japan, Singapore and Switzerland close behind. What the longevity leaders have in common — and what...

India Has Overtaken China: What the 2024 Population Numbers Show

For the first time in centuries, China is not the world's most populous country. India's 1.43 billion people now top the ranking — and the g...

The Most Spoken Languages on Earth — and Why English Isn't Really "First"

English tops the list with 1.5 billion speakers, but most of them learned it as a second language. A look at what the global language rankin...

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