The Our World in Data article Plastic Pollution by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (Sept 2018) is a detailed summary of plastics with 20 charts. For example, one of the charts is a time series of plastic production (downloaded and posted here) showing that, in 2015, the world produced 381 million …
Read More »How many 90+ degree days will your hometown have in the future?
The New York Times interactive article How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? By Nadja Popovich, Blacki Migliozzi, Rumsey Taylor, Josh Williams and Derek Watkins, allows the reader to input a birth year and hometown and provides a graph with historical 90+ degree days and predictions for the …
Read More »How distracting are cell phones?
The extensive article by Pew Research, How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions by Jingjing Jiang (8/22/18), presents detailed data on cell phone use. For example, And 51% of teens say they often or sometimes find their parent or caregiver to be distracted by their own cellphone when they …
Read More »How has Arctic sea ice volume changed?
The Guardian article Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record by Jonathan Watts (8/21/18) includes an animated graph of Arctic sea ice volume by year. We produce a similar graph using monthly average ice volume from PIOMAS (source cited for the data in the article). The graph clearly displays …
Read More »What is the pay gap between black women and white men?
EPI has the answer in the post Separate is still unequal: How patterns of occupational segregation impact pay for black women by Madison Matthews and Valerie Wilson (8/6/2018). On average, in 2017, black women workers were paid only 66 cents on the dollar relative to non-Hispanic white men, even after controlling for education, years of experience, …
Read More »What percent of doctors are female?
OECD has the answer in their post Women make up most of the health sector workers but they are under-represented in high-skilled jobs (3/2017) along with a nice graphic. The current overall health workforce is mostly composed of women. Nonetheless, female health workers remain underrepresented in highly skilled occupations, such as …
Read More »How much has the High Plains (or Ogallala) aquifer declined?
The USGS post High Plains Aquifer Groundwater Levels Continue to Decline (6/16/17) summarizes the results from the USGS report Water-Level and Recoverable Water in Storage Changes, High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment to 2015 and 2013–15. In 2015, total recoverable water in storage in the aquifer was about 2.91 billion acre-feet, which is an overall …
Read More »Where are women less likely than men (ages 30-70) to die of a major disease?
The Our World in Data post, Why do women live longer than men? by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Diana Beltekian (8/14/18) answers the question with the graph copied here. As the next chart shows, in most countries for all the primary causes of death the mortality rates are higher for men. …
Read More »What do we know about nighttime minimum temperatures?
The recent article on Climate.gov Extreme overnight heat in California and the Great Basin in July 2018 by Rebecca Lindsey (8/8/18) provides an overview in context. As the NCEI’s Deke Arndt has blogged about before, nighttime low temperatures are increasing faster than daytime high temperatures across most of the contiguous United States. For …
Read More »How much vacation time do workers get?
Statista put together a chart (copied here) of vacation time for 12 countries selected from OECD data (see table PF2.3.A) of 42 countries in the post Vacation: Americans Get A Raw Deal by Niall McCarthy (8/8/18). Of the 42 countries listed the U.S. is the only one with a statutory minimum …
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